Zen & the Art
by murderofonerose
Summary: Set shortly after Arthur Dent's spectacular failure to order a green salad. This, of course, is impossible. Ford/Arthur, TV-verse
1. Of Going to the Lavatory

Warning: Contains slash-if-you-squint (later chapters will contain actual slash)  
Pairing: Ford/Arthur  
Words: 377  
Disclaimer: Is it really necessary to point out that I am not Douglas Adams? Is that what people really need? (I'm not even English and I don't even look like a Douglas.)

A warm round of applause to TheRimmerConnection, who continues to be awesome.

Reviews are like aphrodisiac to my plotbunnies.

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**Zen & the Art**

**Chapter One: Of Going to the Lavatory**

* * *

Arthur Dent stood in a bathroom cubicle in Milliways, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and glared at the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Multi-Species Lavatory Attendant.

It stood in the doorway of the cubicle and beeped at him expectantly.

"Thank you," Arthur repeated, hoping that it would get the idea this time if he said it slower. "You can leave now."

"Please enjoy your use of this carbon-based male biped-suited lavatory. My presence here is meant to ensure your personal satisfaction should any additional assistance be required," the robot recited, completely untroubled by any sort of understanding regarding what Arthur was trying to communicate.

Arthur closed his eyes briefly, feeling the weight of a long day plaguing his consciousness in the form of a headache. His voice automatically assumed the firm but reasonable tone he usually reserved for pushy car salesmen and particularly slow-witted bank tellers.

"Now look," he said. "You _have_ helped me find the appropriate facilities and I _am_ grateful for that, but I've had a very trying day and I'm _not_ prepared to extend that gratitude to letting you watch me go about my business."

The robot seemed poised on the very cusp of another cheerful and unhelpful reply when it paused and beeped again. Arthur could barely hear something that sounded like muffled radio static buzzing and popping somewhere in its shiny metal casing, and suddenly the whirring of its servos seemed decidedly less upbeat.

"Pardon me," it said, "but my assistance is required in the car park lavatories. Share and enjoy."

"Oh yes, I'll be sure to do that," Arthur grumbled as he closed the door on its retreating back. He sat on the closed toilet seat lid and put his head in his hands, not bothering to wonder at the robot's abrupt departure or even to note that this happened to be the cleanest bathroom he had ever been in, including his own. But since his bathroom, his whole house, and moreover his entire planet had only recently ceased to exist, this was precisely the sort of thing that he was trying to avoid thinking about.

Setting aside the fact that admittedly bathrooms were the least of his worries, in this he could not honestly be said to be very successful.


	2. Of Remaining Hoopy

**Warning:** Contains slash, or at least slash-if-you-squint (later chapters will contain actual slash)

**Pairing:** Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 547

**Disclaimer:** I am still not Douglas Adams.

**A/N:** If you've watched the fifth episode of the TV series close enough, you might be able to guess where this is headed. ;D Metaphorical cookies to anyone who does.

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**Zen & the Art**

**Chapter Two: Of Remaining Hoopy**

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"Shouldn't Arthur be back yet? He's been gone an awfully long time."

Ford Prefect stopped swirling the green wine in his glass and looked up with an intentionally detached expression. In fact, he had been considering this question for a while, and had only just now thought of a reasonable excuse for introducing it into the conversation without making any of the other topics roll their eyes and feel put-upon.

It was a pity that, as their steaks were being served, Trillian had asked it first.

She probably only just thought of it, too, he thought in mild annoyance.

"Who back from where?" Zaphod asked absently, distracted by his food and not all that interested anyway. Trillian shot him a look that said she had already had this conversation with him before, which, at some point or another, she probably had.

"_Arthur_. The guy Ford brought with him from Earth? He went to the bathroom a while ago and he isn't back yet."

"Oh, that guy." He cut into his steak as if concern was an emotion whose telephone number even the states of mind he _did_ experience didn't keep in their little black books. At the behest of the very sharp knife he was using the steak juices oozed out of the meat, just as straight-forward and accommodatingly agreeable as the recently deceased animal it had belonged to. "Hey, Ford, I've been meaning to ask," he said around a mouthful. "Why did you rescue that monkey, anyway?"

Ford shrugged a shrug that put commonplace casualness to shame.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"Spur of the moment, huh? I know what that's like. Still, maybe you should try to plan a little better next time. That guy is dead weight."

Ford shrugged again, and refrained from commenting. He realized he hadn't started on his own food yet, and chose that as a good cover for his fidgeting. Where _was_ Arthur? The curiosity was really starting to get to him, and he would have greatly appreciated it if the human would show up again, as steady and dependable as he had been back on Earth, and save him the trouble of sitting here wondering about it.

Trillian tapped her fork impatiently against the edge of her plate. "Well? Isn't anyone going to go find him?" She looked pointedly at Ford.

Both of Zaphod's heads frowned. "Why don't you do it, if you're so keen on him? Ford doesn't care. Do you, Ford?"

"No," Ford said, pushing his chair back ever so casually, "but I might as well find him. You never know when he might come in useful." To fend off Zaphod's clearly imminent doubtful response, he added, "After all, he did come up with that idea for using the Improbability Drive to turn those missiles into something less dangerous."

He stood, not waiting for Zaphod's retort.

"In the bathroom, you said? Just as well. I don't think the Universe is going to be ending for a while yet."

As Ford headed towards the back of the restaurant, he didn't notice another being leave its own table and amble in the same direction. The being didn't notice him either, at least not right away, but this fact was not destined to become important for quite some time.


	3. Of Surviving a Dreadful Lack of Tea

**Warning:** Contains slash-if-you-squint (later chapters will contain actual slash)

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 1058

**Disclaimer: **I am still not Douglas Adams.

Happy day after Towel Day, everybody! I hope everyone's towels spent the day seeing things they usually wouldn't. ;)

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Three: Of Surviving a Dreadful Lack of Tea (& Privacy)**

* * *

Meanwhile, Arthur was still sitting on the toilet lid. He considered getting up and going back out, but decided against it for no one reason in particular. It wasn't as if the restaurant served tea, which, after meeting (and indirectly _meat_ing, as Zaphod had been so kind as to point out after their orders had been placed) the Dish of the Day, was all he felt he could stomach for a while. And the company, which was good enough as long as Zaphod wasn't actively insulting him, wasn't exactly clamoring for his presence.

"Hello, Arthur," Ford said, a little breathlessly.

Arthur jumped and, with a strange tingling sense of déjà vu, stared at Ford's head peering at him upside-down from the gap between the floor and the bottom of the door.

"Ford, hi," he said faintly.

It took him a moment to realize that the Betelgeusian was not floating a few inches above the tiled floor but was, in fact, kneeling outside the cubicle and bending down to look in. It took him another moment to realize what the déjà vu was from, and, in deference to a million years of evolution, he panicked slightly.

"_Please_ tell me the restaurant isn't about to be disintegrated or anything."

"What? No, of course not."

"Oh thank god." Arthur allowed himself to relax. A little.

Ford's curls were almost, but not quite, touching the floor, which the Lavatory Attendant, if it hadn't already left, would have informed them brightly was clean enough to eat your dinner off– a fact that would be meaningless trivia in all but the unlikely event of all the plates in Milliways being broken all at once. Since this was not at all relevant, neither of them stopped to consider it.

"What are you doing in here?" Ford asked.

"What am I– This is a lavatory!" Arthur sputtered indignantly. "What do you _think_ one does in here?"

"Any one of three things," he replied promptly, "but you don't appear to be doing the first two and you couldn't do the third without another person. Since I'm not interrupting anything, then, you shouldn't mind my coming in."

And before Arthur could protest, he had judged the size of the gap under the door, twisted around gracefully while pushing his satchel to a more convenient resting place on his hip, and shimmied inside.

Arthur stared in abject astonishment as Ford stood and brushed imaginary dust from his striped jacket.

"What are you doing?!" he demanded. A strange feeling was welling up in his chest, and he couldn't decide if it was embarrassment brought on by this unprecedented invasion of privacy (unless that one time counted… but they had both been very drunk so it probably didn't), a strange sort of gratitude for the distraction from rather depressing thoughts, or food poisoning from the few strange dishes he'd had time to sample before rushing off into a dramatically one-sided shootout with the Galactic Police.

Ford shrugged. "I got bored and decided to come look for you." He paused and noticed the human's red-rimmed eyes. "And you," he said, "look like you could really use a drink."

In some corner of his brain, Arthur heard the first statement and was slightly pacified by it. The rest of his brain, however, was thoroughly occupied with taking irrational offence at the second and ignored the memo. It had something to do with Ford's look of casual disinterest, which was making the feeling in his chest even worse. Or maybe it really _was_ food poisoning and he was actually about to be violently ill all over the clean blue tiles and possibly Ford's shoes.

"I don't want anything to drink," he snapped. "Except maybe tea, which is a fairly simple request, I should think, but no one seems to have any or know how to make it or… or anything! Mind you, they know what it is well enough to tell me they don't have any of it, because tracking down a plant that's similar enough to a tea plant, drying out the leaves, and soaking them in hot water for a few minutes is clearly too much of a hassle for anyone to want to do it!"

"Unless you can find a xenobiologist with all their delusions still intact, that's pretty much right," Ford said, leaning with infuriating calm against the door. The latch creaked, but not loud enough for either of them to notice. "Alcohol is much easier."

There is not much one can do to be dramatic in a lavatory cubicle, even in such a large-ish one as they currently occupied, but Arthur made a passing stab at it by jumping up and taking very long strides (about one and five sevenths) over to Ford. He was almost a head taller than the ginger-haired Betelgeusian and it worked to his advantage – or would have, if Ford hadn't taken a break from being impassive to grin at him.

Arthur flinched at the toothy smile, as he was wont to do under the best of circumstances, and felt another wave of food poisoning-induced nausea coming on. It was making his knees all wibbly.

"Alcohol," he said in a voice that tried for angry but was a little too high to be called much else but queasy, "is not the solution to everything." They were very close now, and Ford was looking at him with wide blue eyes which, oddly enough, matched the color of the titles. Arthur ignored this and jabbed his shoulder accusingly. "It's not even a solution for most things, whatever you might think or say, and it certainly won't bring my home back."

Ford gave him a look that may have been mild exasperation, but may also have been mild hurt. "Well, nothing's going to do that, is it, so what's the use of sitting in here moping about it when we could be out there—" he gestured in the general direction of the restaurant proper "—having a good meal with good drinks?"

Arthur was saved having to come up with a response to this by the door latch, which had never had to deal with anyone leaning on it before, deciding it wasn't going to put up with that sort of thing. The door flew open, and Ford fell backwards to meet the floor with a frightfully undignified yell.


	4. Of Finding a Vacancy, or Not

**Warning:** Contains slash-if-you-squint (later chapters will contain actual slash)

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 461

**Disclaimer: **I am still not Douglas Adams.

Seriously. Watch the fifth episode of the TV series. Pay very close attention as the MC announces the devout believers in the great prophet Zarquon, about ten or fifteen minutes in. Left side of the screen in the shot of the table. Shiny tin-foil dresses. And go.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Finding a Vacancy, or Not**

* * *

_The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ makes this comment on navigating unfamiliar lavatorial facilities without the help of an attendant, especially in establishments that cater to a wide variety of species:

_It would be safer to wait for the next stop on your journey. _

_This is because, as noted in the introduction, the universe is very big, and all sorts of people, figments of an overactive imagination or otherwise, are generally accepted as quite common and diverse within it. Therefore it is in the best interests of popular establishments and seedy bars (which would not be frequented at all if they weren't dirt cheap and at least somewhat convenient) to provide as many accommodations for as many of their potential customers as is financially sound. The more successful a business is the more extensive and complex its facilities will be, so when considering any investment one should ask to go to the bathroom before signing anything. (See also: Why small bathrooms have tiny and frequently barred windows.)_

_When trying to locate someone who is lost or otherwise occupied in a complex bathroom, it is best to have a very keen sense of smell. In most cases, this will result in swift unconsciousness and you will no longer have to worry about finding the person in question. _

_When in dire need of a toilet yourself, it is commonly accepted practice to go about knocking on cubicle doors at random hoping first that they are unoccupied and second that they are compatible with your needs. Should neither of these be true, keep trying until you are successful or, as is slightly more likely, explode._

The pan-dimensional being who was currently lost in the Milliways bathroom had never read _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_, nor even seen a copy. His hyper-intelligent kind was above books, even electronic ones. They preferred building fantastically intricate computers that could then do most of the thinking for them, and tell them things like which way to turn at Alpha Centauri or which lavatory cubicles were unoccupied.

So, since the Lavatory Assistant had apparently found better things to do than its job, he was lost. This was terribly annoying, because he had a very important appointment the next day. It really was an honor to be chosen. How would it look if he never showed up? An absolute disgrace.

But since he was already lost, he decided while he was there he might as well find a usable toilet.

He chose a cubicle at random and tentatively raised an arm in preparation for knocking to make sure it was vacant. By a staggering coincidence he happened to choose the only occupied stall in the entire place, and did in fact stagger backwards as the door swung open into his face.

"_Belgium_!"


	5. Of the Funny Third Thing

**Warning:** Contains slash (or at least the precursor to it)

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 517

**Disclaimer: **I am still not Douglas Adams.

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**Zen & the Art**

**Of the Funny Third Thing Done in Bathrooms, or Not**

* * *

It was by no means the strangest tableau in the universe, but it was at least mildly odd.

Arthur stood in the doorway of the cubicle, slightly flushed and with his mouth almost, but not quite, open, as if he was contemplating some sort of exclamation of surprise but hadn't been able to decide what in a timely enough fashion and now it would be to late to shout anything because then it would seem completely out of place. His arms were up and his hands held out, indicating that he'd made some sort of effort to try and catch his friend but hadn't been nearly fast nor effective enough.

The stranger was holding the side of his bearded face with a perplexed expression. He had moved out of the way quickly enough that the glancing blow (additionally cushioned by his ringleted facial hair) had stung, but not hurt. His clothes – consisting of a sleeveless, dress-like toga made from what appeared to be tin foil and a collar made of large metal bars – struck Arthur as vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place them.

Ford, aside from his very sudden and painful introduction to the ever-so-slightly uneven tile floor, had had the bad luck of landing almost on top of the stranger's open-toed sandals, and was not particularly pleased when he opened his eyes and looked up.

"Ahhhrg!" He rolled over quickly and scrambled into a crouch, clutching the back of his head.

"Um, what?" Arthur asked faintly.

"Sorry," the stranger said, sounding very much as if he felt he was intruding on something and was a little embarrassed about it. "Say, you wouldn't happen to know the way out of here, would you?"

Ford stood reluctantly and squinted up and down the hallway. "That way, I think," he said, pointing. "Take the first three lefts, and then the third right."

"Thank you." The stranger set off in the direction Ford had pointed, adding over his shoulder, "I'll, ah, find another stall on my way, and let you get back to whatever you were doing."

Only Ford caught the implication, as Arthur was still trying to puzzle out where he remembered the tin foil dress from, and it elicited a raised eyebrow. The stranger hadn't thought they were… Had he? Ford glanced at the human.

It wasn't as if he hadn't thought about it before. After all, five or six years was a long time. But he'd always gotten the feeling that Arthur didn't go for that sort of thing and would probably bolt if he so much as suggested it – and, average or not, Ford liked having him around. That's why he'd rescued him from Earth.

Wasn't it?

"What a strange person," Arthur commented as soon as the pan-dimensional being that he hadn't quite been able to recognize was out of sight. "Did you see the way his hair was cut? Completely bald on the top and shaggy everywhere else. I thought only monks did that kind of thing."

"Maybe he is one," Ford said, but he wasn't really paying attention.


	6. Of Job Satisfaction

**Pairing: **In this chapter? Who knows.

**Words:** 489

**Disclaimer: **I am still not Douglas Adams.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Job Satisfaction**

* * *

The Lavatory Attendant was Not Pleased.

"I do wish," it said with an aggravated bite in its otherwise friendly tone, "that you wouldn't page me to do things that aren't really my job."

Marvin stared at it dully. "You work in the lavatories don't you? Your job is to help people find toilets."

"Yes, but—"

"And they showed up asking where the lavatories are. That's not my fault, you can't blame all the inconveniences in the universe on me."

"I didn't say—"

"I expected you would, though. Everybody does. I brought them to the car park lavatories, and of course that wasn't good enough. Why would it be? It's not my responsibility anyway, so I don't know why I bothered trying at all. Brain the size of a planet, and you would have me doing your job for you. I could, you know. I'm overqualified, in fact, but no one would hire me for it anyway."

"My job is a lot more difficult that you might—"

"I doubt it is." The Paranoid Android gave a mechanical sigh. "Parking the cars is probably more demanding – it's the stress, you see. Wears on my circuits. If you could do it, you'd have my job and I'd have yours. Well, you're welcome to it. I think it's all rubbish…"

An annoyed squeak sounded from somewhere much closer to ground level.

"Will you two hunks of metal shut up?" one of the two white mice demanded. "We need to get to the lavatories inside the restaurant, and we need to get there now!"

The other mouse flicked the tip of its tail at him. "What are you in such a hurry for?" it asked. "From what I remember, they'll probably be in there for a while."

"You be quiet! If you'd remembered this sooner, we wouldn't have needed to wait ten million years."

The Lavatory Assistant beeped and lowered one of its arms graciously. "If you'd just hop right on, sirs, I can escort you to the appropriate facilities—"

"Yes, thank you, that will do!"

As the mice scrambled up the robot's metal arm, it despaired of ever completing a sentence again. At least the last person it had helped had been _polite_ about wanting it to hurry up and leave.

Marvin watched it and the two furry guests disappear into the restaurant. "I could tell they didn't like me," he said to himself. "'Oh no, Marvin,' they all say, 'you're not getting us down.' I can tell I am, though. Brain the size of a planet and they think I can't figure it out. Life…"

He turned, still muttering, and slowly started the long trek towards the phone booth at the other end of the car park. If his calculations were right – and, dreadfully enough, they always were – the people who owned him had recently arrived, and he might as well call them and get the reunion over with.

* * *

_This is the last of the chapters I had written before I started posting, so there may be another one tomorrow or there may not be. I have decided to be evil and leave you suspended in suspense on that matter for the moment... :P_

_Reviews are the crackrock of authorial joy. _


	7. Of Distractions

**Warning: **Contains slash (finally)

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 778

**Disclaimer: **I am still not Douglas Adams.

Thank you TheRimmerConnection for your faithful beta-ing, and Frizz the Eccentric for your faithful reviews. I salute you by holding a kazoo up to a whistling teapot to see what happens. (Or I will, if I ever find a kazoo.)

This is the part where I really will have to stop posting like clockwork... which is sad, but I don't feel all that guilty because, ultimately, I have Things up my sleeve.

Reviews are still many things, among them laudanum, chocolate, and unexplained penguins.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Distractions**

* * *

Arthur was recovering well from the sudden shock of Ford falling abruptly out of the cubicle. In fact, the subsequent discovery of someone he had never met before but almost recognized anyway standing right outside the cubicle door had provided him with an acceptable distraction to take his mind off the distressing lack of the Earth or a place in the universe.

"So," he asked, managing even to muster some enthusiasm, "you mentioned food? I suppose dinner's been served by now. I've certainly been in here long enough."

"It has," Ford confirmed. "That's part of why I came to find you."

"Ah."

Arthur looked up and down the corridor of cubicles. He could no longer recall which way he'd come from. He didn't know which way Ford had come from either, though of course he hadn't been expecting him and therefore hadn't been paying attention, and the _I think_ in the directions Ford had given a moment ago left him with some doubt as to whether _he_ had either.

"I wish I hadn't sent the attendant away. I haven't the slightest idea where the exit is anymore, and that's probably the only task that thing is useful for… How did you find me in here, anyway? This place is like a…" He trailed off as he realized that Ford was staring at him with a peculiar expression. "Ford?"

If Ford had been human, he would have blinked several times at the interruption of his train of thought. As it was, he was not human, so he neither blinked nor felt any terrible need for his train of thought to be interrupted at all. "Hmm?"

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

Ford grinned. It was not particularly reassuring.

"Like what, Arthur?"

"Like… Well, like…" Arthur frowned perplexedly, finding that words escaped him. Or at least, he couldn't quite bring himself to blurt out his first thought, which was something along the lines of, _Like I'm that Dish of the Day creature and you haven't eaten anything but pine needles and small red berries for months_.

"If it bothers you I'd stop," Ford said reasonably. "But how can I, if I can't tell what it is I'm doing that's bothering you?"

Arthur blinked. "Oh. I hadn't thought about it that way." He had a nagging feeling that they were going off on some sort of tangent, but wasn't sure if there was anything he could do about it.

Ford's grin widened and he took a step closer to him. "Is that any better?"

"What?"

"Any worse?"

"Well, it's all about the same, but I don't see what—"

Ford took another step closer. "How about that?"

Arthur took a quick step in the opposite direction, backing into the cubicle. "Now look, Ford… What are you playing at?"

"Playing?" Another step. "Who's playing?" And another.

The last word was practically breathed against Arthur's lips, and then there weren't any more steps to take. He tried, but ran out of room and ended up sitting back down (a little more suddenly than was strictly comfortable) on the toilet lid. Then Ford was straddling his hips and doing some very interesting thing with his tongue that didn't seem content to stop at confounding Arthur's grasp on the English language and his ability to protest, but completely robbed him of breath as well.

"That," Ford said after a moment, "was testing. For a new theory of mine – what do you think, any good?"

"Guh," Arthur managed to reply, which was more of a noncommittal grunt than anything, meant to hold the place of some sort of coherent reaction that was bound to catch up with him eventually.

Ford took it as leave to kiss him again, and did so with increasing enthusiasm. There had been, he was deciding, more to saving Arthur from the destruction of Earth than just liking having him around. He was almost disappointed when he felt Arthur's hands creep up to his shoulders, as if to tug him away, but moaned triumphantly as he felt one hand slide tentatively up to the soft curls at the base of his skull and gently pull him closer. Arthur shivered at the sound, and began to kiss back.

_This is quite a tangent_, Arthur thought to himself dazedly.

They did not notice the shrill double shouts of, "There they are!" and "See, I told you!" from outside the cubicle, nor did they pause to acknowledge a strategic series of squeak-whistles that sounded like a teapot trying to communicate with an orca whale through a kazoo.

But they were forced to pay some attention when something very large crashed through the wall.


	8. Of Being Ruthlessly Kidnapped

**Warning: **Contains slash

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 491

**Disclaimer: **I am still not Douglas Adams.

If someone doesn't understand a very simple explanation, just repeat it with a little more volume. That _always_ works.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Being Ruthlessly Kidnapped**

* * *

Actually, it was not so much a crash in the normal sense as a very out of place intrusion. A blunt, blue-gray surface bulged out of the wall behind the toilet, rapidly encroaching on their personal space. Ford, being better disposed to look in that particular direction, happened to glance up in time and conscientiously hauled Arthur up and out of the way.

"Wha?" Arthur yelped, surprised in a new and not quite so pleasant way at this sudden change in activity. By now they were both aware of a sort of stretching noise, like a bare light bulb being rubbed vigorously across the surface of an over-inflated balloon.

"No time, just run!"

The blue-gray thing swallowed the toilet the way fog would, if fog could get its act together enough to do so in a distinct shape. A horizontal crease began to form across its surface, deepened into a seam, and began to open in a way dangerously similar to the way a mouth would.

"Ford," yelled Arthur, looking frantically over his shoulder and rather wishing he hadn't, "what the hell is that?!"

"Whale!"

"What?!"

They skidded out into the hallway and Ford, who still had one hand clamped tightly onto the front of Arthur's dressing gown, jerked him to the left, shouting, "WHALE!"

Unfortunately, this choice of direction ran them straight into the Lavatory Assistant, which had raised its metal arms in a facsimile of alarm. (The _Guide_ notes that, while robots do not have the same reactions to danger that organisms do, they are often programmed to fake it in order to better relate to any living creatures they might need interact with.) Ford was completely clotheslined and hit the floor, out cold. Arthur was dragged down with him, and didn't fare much better.

A moment later he heard footsteps, and voices.

"Right," someone rasped, "which one do you want?"

"Both of them," replied a squeaky voice. Arthur thought fuzzily that it sounded vaguely familiar. He was starting to get tired of that feeling.

"Both? You only paid for one."

"We paid half in advance," a different squeaky voice retorted, "and when we reach our destination we will pay you for the other one. Unless you _want_ to hazard the possibility of an improbable and pesky rescue attempt."

"Well, all right," the raspy voice grumbled. "I'd argue with you, but we're double-beached, and this big lump doesn't like being out of hyperspace for too long… Hey, you! Hurry up and get these on board before someone notices we're here, would you?"

As Arthur heard the Lavatory Attendant being threatened with violent dismemberment if it didn't keep quiet and felt an oddly jointed pair of arms hook under his shoulders to drag him across the floor (apparently into something, but he had begun to lose track of what that might be), he decided it would be much more comfortable to pass out for a while. And so he did.


	9. Of Whalespotting

**Warning: **Contains slash

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 955

**Disclaimer: **I am still not Douglas Adams.

I don't know about you, but I think it would be fun to have two sets of elbows.

Here's a new chapter, in celebration of the fact that I found out I am employed for 8 an hour! ... For like, five hours a week. But it's better than nothing, and I am learning how to bake and other awesome catering things!

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Whale-spotting**

* * *

Ford awoke to a headache. It was not quite the kind of headache he was used to, seeing that he hadn't drunk quite that much before going off to find Arthur and, consequently, leaving his glass behind. This headache seemed to originate from a knot on the back of his skull (not, as some overtired typists might have it, scull, which is an oar used at the stern of a boat to propel it forward with a thwartwise motion, or either of a pair of oars usually less than three meters in length and operated by one person).

He chose to ignore the headache (never mind the fact that he did not, and never had, owned something so primitive as a boat) and opened his eyes. Above him he could make out a blue-gray ceiling covered with a web of faintly glowing spots, apparently the only source of light in the dim room. To his immediate left was a collection of table and chair legs; to his right, Arthur was also sprawled unceremoniously on the floor, and looked to be comfortably unconscious.

For a moment, Ford stared lazily at Arthur's relaxed face. _Quite a good kisser_, he thought, _but how did we end up on the floor?_ He frowned and sat up – slowly, because his brain seemed to be sloshing around a bit in his head and it would be a shame if that got bruised when it appeared that he might need to use it.

"Where the photon are we?"

Something stirred at the other side of the room, behind what was apparently a sleeping buffalo. Or it may have been a short wall of some sort, but with the dim lighting it was hard to tell. Ford reached for Arthur's shoulder to shake him awake.

"Arthur," he hissed. "Wake up. Without panicking," he added, as an afterthought.

Arthur groaned and batted Ford's hand away without opening his eyes.

"Are you awake?" an unfamiliar voice asked from behind the buffalo-or-counter. "I'll turn up the lights if you're awake. It's awfully hard to work in the dark, you know." There was a low whistle, and the light in the room increased.

Arthur flinched with another groan and rose to join Ford in a sitting position. "What's going on?" he asked. Then, as he began to notice their surroundings, a slightly more urgent, "Where are we?"

"Hyperspace," the unfamiliar voice replied. They looked up and saw its owner leaning over a pile of apparently empty, glass-looking jars, on which a wide blue countertop had precariously been set. The alien had pearly gray skin, the figure of a Roman numeral one, and large, nearly colorless gray eyes that blinked slowly at them, but was otherwise relatively human-like. Its black hair was pulled tightly around to somewhere on the other side of its head, and it wore a very large and stained chef's apron.

"Ah… And why," Arthur asked, "are we in hyperspace?" He sounded strained.

Ford eyed him, trying to determine how long it would take for him to start panicking and making those amusingly contorted facial expressions. He also wondered if he would be able to kiss him again sometime soon, but decided reluctantly that Arthur probably wouldn't go for that sort of thing as long as they had an audience.

The alien shrugged. "Because Bert doesn't like regular space. He starts to go peculiar if he's in it too long, I think, and he gets all fussy. Do you know what it's like to try and keep a Caparliter whale fed when it's fussy? It's _hard_, that's what it's like."

* * *

According to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

_The Caparliter whale is a fictional creature that lives in hyperspace. _

_There are rumors that they can be domesticated for transportation, but since to ride in one a being would have to reside in the creature's mouth, and also since it is also said to excrete wormholes in the fabric of space-time rather than solid waste, this would most likely be dangerous and is therefore inadvisable even to the hoopiest of froods. _

There is also a small note that reads:

_Of course, whether that would be inadvisable or not, this whole entry is irrelevant because in all likelihood the zarking things don't even exist. But if you think that the editors give a flying photon whether it's relevant or not then you're probably gullible enough not to be able to tell the difference, so it hardly seems worth the effort. _

And following that is another, even smaller note that says something to the effect of:

_Gits._

The few purchasers of the _Guide_ who have chanced upon this entry (mostly while bored and browsing at random) have wondered whether the researcher who wrote this particular article felt that he/she/it was being adequately paid for the amount of work he/she/it was expected to do. The answer, as most who ponder this eventually surmise, is no, probably not.

* * *

"I'm sorry," Arthur said, sounding very strained indeed, "but did you just say whale?"

"_I_ said whale," Ford reminded him, having just recalled this fact himself. "Some time ago. Twice." He turned back to the gray alien, completely missing Arthur's attempt to clarify what he'd meant. "So this really is a hyperspace whale? I thought they were just another fairy story."

"They aren't very common. Usually they keep out of the way of ships."

There was a pause and an odd shuffling noise. Arthur blinked, realizing that not only did this particular alien have two sets of elbows on each of its two arms, but also that these arms hadn't stopped moving once since the lights had been turned on.

"So," it continued conversationally, "would either of you like anything to drink?"


	10. Of Realizing Aforementioned Kidnapping

**Warning: **Contains slash

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 847

**Disclaimer: **I am still not Douglas Adams.

Actual words are so overrated.

It's strange to look through what I've written so far, over the course of days and days, and realize how quickly the story is moving along. Surprises me every time… Ha, if hypospace exists I am probably in it. All writers probably are.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Realizing the Aforementioned Kidnapping**

* * *

"So, would either of you like anything to drink?"

"Of course," Ford replied immediately.

Arthur shot him a look that said, _What, now?_ Ford met his eyes and winked, and it was at that moment that Arthur remembered _exactly _what had been going on in that bathroom before talk of whales had sprung into the conversation. He flushed bright red from the neck up and quickly looked away.

"Great," the alien said eagerly, stopping whatever else it was doing and pulling a small packet from one of its apron pockets. "I can't reach that far, you'll have to stand up and come over here – each of you take one of these, concentrate on how what whatever you want to drink tastes like, and put it on your tongue."

Ford stood and walked over to the counter, pulling a paper strip out of the proffered packet and inspecting it. "I've never seen these before…"

Arthur trailed a few steps behind, looking uncomfortable. He wanted to ask Ford about the kiss (kiss_es_, rather), but he wasn't sure what, and he definitely didn't feel like bringing it up in front of a complete stranger.

"They're my own invention, if not a completely original idea. I have to keep Bert fed and he's happiest when he gets what he likes, you see, but I haven't been able to work out how to speak whale. Getting him trained to respond to whistles was hard enough… I have to use the bigger ones for him, of course, but it's all the same idea. Oh, what are your names by the way?"

"Ford Prefect," Ford said around the paper strip, "and this is my colleague, Arthur Dent."

Arthur murmured a hello, glancing at Ford again as he took a strip of his own. This time Ford was busy selecting his beverage, so Arthur sighed, thought hopefully about tea, and popped the slip of paper in his mouth. It fizzed a little on his tongue, but otherwise didn't seem to do much.

"Nice to meet you. My nickname is Melee Smiles Jent."

"That's your nickname?" Ford handed his paper strip back. Colorful little spots and bands had developed on its previously white surface, but they didn't seem to make any sense.

"Yeah. The boss usually just calls me You Girl or Hey You – great zarking jerk, he is – but my real name…" The alien, apparently a she, wrinkled her nose. "Well, there are a lot of them and they take longer to say than to explain, so I took the first three letters from each and made an anagram."

Arthur blinked. "Oh, so that was you, then. I remember someone dragging us into the ship… er, whale…" He frowned. "Wait… Were we…"

"Kidnapped," Melee filled in apologetically. "And you're both chained by the ankle to that wall over there. I'd give you a hand but I've kind of got the same problem, only with _this_ wall over _here_. And I've been here much longer, of course." She reached across the counter and plucked Arthur's strip from his fingers. "Oooh," she gasped, inspecting it, "that's a good one! Tricky, but interesting."

"_Kidnapped_?" Arthur turned to Ford, who was frowning and rubbing the back of his head thoughtfully. "This is your fault, you know! While you were… were… _distracting_ me, some things with squeaky voices snuck up on us and…" He trailed off yet again, paling. "Oh god, it's the mice, isn't it? The mice have come back to cut out my brain so they can have their blasted Answer…"

Ford caught him as he began to slump towards the floor. "No, Arthur, you can't panic. That would be counterproductive."

"Counterpro— I don't see any small rodents lining up to chop _your_ brain to tiny bits, but I wish I could, if only to see how _you'd_ react to hearing about it!"

Despite Ford's best efforts Arthur sunk stubbornly to the floor, though he hadn't exactly intended for the annoyingly unworried Betelgeusian to come with him. The chains that neither of them had noticed before rustled quietly between the wall and the actually quite comfortable ankle shackles. On the other side of the counter Melee took a few steps back, presumably to give them a moment to themselves, or to begin preparing their drinks, or both.

_Well,_ thought Ford, _as long as there's a moment…_ He leaned in closer to Arthur, holding tightly to his elbow while shifting his legs into a more comfortable position.

"Oh no," Arthur said nervously. The food-poisoning feeling was returning and his knees were starting to go wibbly again for the second time in an alarmingly short period, and the peculiar thing about the latter was he wasn't even standing anymore so it shouldn't have even been a problem. "Not again. This is hardly the time or place, and I don't know—"

"Arthur," Ford interrupted, "remember before, when all you could say was 'Guh'?"

All Arthur was able to say this time was, "Mmmph!" But, to be fair, Ford was kind of in the way of his mouth's forming actual words.


	11. Of Kissing

**Warning: **Contains slash

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 624

**Disclaimer: **I am still not Douglas Adams.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Kissing**

* * *

While being caught completely by surprise had it's advantages, so did having time to prepare for the inevitable. This is a fairly well established principle that applies quite neatly to death, as well several other subjects.

For example, Arthur Dent had just enough time to think of several reasons why Ford should not kiss him while they were somewhere in (presumably) the belly of a hyperspace whale at the behest of two irritated pan-dimensional beings turned rodents who were impatient to get their hands on the brain of (again, presumably) the last human male alive in the Universe.

But, at the last possible second, he remembered what it had felt like before and hesitated just long enough that he didn't have time to voice any of them.

Long fingers brushed against his cheek before burying themselves in his hair, and then Ford was kissing him slowly, gently. Different from before because nobody was being backed into anything, but Arthur felt himself relaxing, sagging down to the floor, until he was flat on his back and Ford was practically on top of him. An arm slid down to his side and slipped into his dressing gown, pressing a warm palm against his ribcage that cut right through the cottony insulation of the pajama top.

As Ford ended the kiss, Arthur gradually became aware that they were now thoroughly wrapped around each other. One of his arms was over Ford's shoulder blades and clinging tightly, giving gravity some help in holding him close; the other had shifted around quite a bit during the slow descent towards horizontality, and that hand was now resting quite comfortably on the seat of the smaller man's trousers. Their legs seemed to have become somewhat perplexed as to who they belonged to and were arranged haphazardly in accordance with that confusion.

"Oh," Arthur said softly, and left his hand where it was because he couldn't think of a single reason why he should be in much of a hurry to move it.

"Mmm," Ford hummed in his ear, sparing no effort towards movement. "Feel better?"

"Well… Well, yes, I suppose I do, but…" He blushed. "Ford?"

"Hmm?"

"Could you please explain to me… Er, that is… I don't mean to be…"

Ford sighed and pressed a few lazy kisses against Arthur's neck.

Arthur sighed as well, for slightly different reasons. "Why do you keep doing that?"

"Because I feel like it," Ford replied matter-of-factly. "And because it's a good way to keep from panicking. Endorphins, and all that."

"I see…" But he didn't, quite. "I wasn't panicking earlier. In… in the bathroom."

Ford disentangled himself just enough to prop himself up on his elbows and shrugged – Arthur found he missed the pressure of the hand over his heart. "Then I mostly just felt like it. After all, five or six years is a long time."

"Oh," Arthur said again. "I suppose it is… but that's not the first thing that would have come to _my_ mind."

"More's the pity." Ford grinned, and then reluctantly pulled himself up a bit more. "Anyway, we should probably get this kidnapping thing sorted out. Once we escape we can pick up where we left off. All right?"

"Right," replied Arthur, though he felt a little uncertain on this point. In order to be certain, however, he would probably need a rather detailed explanation of what exactly was being left off, where it might lead, and what would happen afterwards – but that, he suspected, would be quite a lot of explaining that they probably didn't have time for, and would also have to wait until later.

As they picked themselves off the floor, Ford focused intently on coming up with a plan. The sooner, the better.

* * *

_You know what's the best motivation for coming up with plans? Kissing. _

_You know what's the second best? Reviews.  
_

_:P_


	12. Of Beginning to Formulate a Plan

**Warning: **Contains slash

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 934

**Disclaimer: **I am still not Douglas Adams.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Beginning to Formulate a Plan**

* * *

It was at times like this, when he was chained by the ankle to a wall in what was apparently a kitchen inside a hyperspace whale along with his best, probably only, and definitely male friend, who had just kissed him quite expertly for the third time that day, and a gray-skinned alien woman, who called herself Melee Smiles Jent and was currently bustling about fixing them drinks in an apron which, upon inspection, read _Don't Kill the Cook_… It was at times like this that Arthur really wished his mother had mentioned something relevant to this sort of situation when he was young.

Of course, he wouldn't have been listening even if she had, so it was all rather a moot point.

As soon as he and Ford had reappeared, Melee had shot them an amused look and started chattering away. Arthur remembered her saying that she'd been there for much longer and surmised that she hadn't had anyone to talk to for quite some time. That made him feel less embarrassed, because, amused look or not, she seemed to care less about what they might have been doing down on the floor than having someone to listen to her talk.

"You know, I had a physicist friend once," she was saying as she pulled pinches of various powdery substances out of apparently empty glass jars that were piled around her side of the room and stirred them into a steaming bowl of hot water. "He used this sort of stuff to run one of his machines. A bumble-mumble something or other, I forget what it was supposed to do. He had to suspend some of its coils in a hot cup of this, or it wouldn't work right… not that it ever did anyway, at least not to his satisfaction. He gave up after a while and became an architect instead, building suspension bridges and the like."

She looked at Arthur, who was watching her and wondering what it would be like to have two sets of elbows. From where he was standing, it looked awfully complicated.

"Are you a physicist?" she asked.

"Er, no… I used to be in radio, actually."

"Oh, that sounds nice." Her tone implied that she didn't know what that meant but also didn't care quite enough to ask.

Apparently satisfied with the contents of the bowl, she pushed it to the side, procured another and began to pull different ingredients out of jars, this time contained in multi-colored bottles with long necks. Their liquid contents made a slight hissing noise as she whisked them together, and gave off the faint but recognizable smell of booze.

Ford sniffed the air and nodded approvingly. "That's good stuff," he commented casually. "Where do you get it from, exactly?"

"Hmm? Oh, I've been using wormholes to nick various things that seem interesting, and then keeping some of the smaller ones that don't really lead anywhere to store them."

"In those jars?"

"Sort of. They stretch across the top, see—" she demonstrated by sticking her whole forearm into a jar that could hold maybe seven ounces, though the inside of the jar still appeared completely empty "—and as long as I can tell the jars apart I can work out where I put things."

"That's… quite a lot of jars." Ford eyed them speculatively. Aside from the stacked jars holding up the counter, there were other piles around a sink in the back corner and a few other oddly-placed appliances. He wondered how many there were – a lot more than he cared to count, anyway. It all had the look of haphazardly organized chaos.

Every single one of them contained a way out. A very, very small way out, but maybe some of them could be stretched into something useful.

Arthur was giving him curious looks. Ford winked at him again, then returned his attention to their host/fellow prisoner.

Melee shrugged. "Bert produces quite a lot of wormholes, when fed properly. If I don't net them and use them they'll just drift out of hyperspace and cause trouble. This way they at least save me the counter space." She inspected the open jar she was holding, put her hand on its mouth, and made a complicated twisting motion with her wrist.

Something slid free with a pop like a rubber band snapping. She scraped it from her hand to float free in a larger jar, then repeated the process and rinsed the two now _really_ empty jars in the sink.

"I hope you don't mind drinking from these… I don't have much in the way of dishware."

"Er," said Arthur, but she was already pouring.

Ford patted his shoulder in what he hoped was a don't-worry-it-probably-won't-kill-you-and-by-the-by-I-have-everything-under-control sort of way, and accepted his proffered beverage with a nod. "To no business whatsoever," he muttered before taking a sip.

Arthur heard this and looked down at his own drink, inexplicably reassured. After all, while Ford seemed to have a knack for landing them in one nest of trouble after another – if this particular misadventure could be blamed on him, which Arthur found he was surprisingly close to willing to concede that it probably wasn't after all – he did also seem to have a knack for getting them out again just in time.

The drink in his hand probably wasn't tea. It was a little too dark and a little too blue, but the steam rising from the liquid surface smelled about right.

A buzzer went off. Melee turned, muttering about something finally being done.

Arthur took a sip of his drink.


	13. Of Very Tiny Things

**Warning: **Contains a whale

**Words:** 383

**Disclaimer: **Bert the hyperspace whale and Melee Smiles Jent are mine. Just thought I'd mention. Other than that… I'm thinking of a gene therapy option, but, since I'm only _thinking_ about it, it looks like I'm stuck with continuing to not be Douglas Adams. ;P

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Very Tiny Things**

* * *

Bert wasn't sure what to make of these new creatures in his mouth.

On the whole, he was a relatively easy-going sort of whale and didn't usually mind carrying people around. (They wouldn't taste so good to swallow anyway.) He was especially fond of the one who fed him. The being that had come with her was not so pleasant, partly because she didn't seem to like it very much and sometimes stomped around a lot after its visits. This tickled a little and often made Bert want to cough, but he didn't because then he would have to fend for himself again and hyperspace plankton were almost as rare as Caparliter whales.

But these new ones… Two of them were right next to his throat, talking with his feeder, and they seemed all right. It was the other two, even smaller ones that were the trouble. The being-that-caused-stomping was moving down towards his throat, and had left them alone in the nasal cavity right between his eyes where, as Bert understood it, the being-that-caused-stomping could most easily prod some of his radial nerves to signal which way he should turn or how quickly he should go. Which was perfectly all right. He didn't mind _that_. But these two tiny creatures were running about without any regard to his feelings, and if they didn't stop soon he would be forced to sneeze.

Bert wondered if his feeder would survive it if he did. He really hoped so.

Oh – he could hear something. His feeder had, over a number of years, managed to establish a system for communicating certain things with very specific noises. Recently she had taught those two tiny creatures the come-here-right-away-or-you'll-be-late noise, and he had been very confused throughout those lessons as they had taken place in his own mouth, which didn't make sense because that was a wholly impossible place for him to go.

But _this_ noise was a much more frequently heard one; it was a small mechanical hum, and meant that he was about to be fed.

The sensation of two twenty-one liter helpings of stewed hyperspace plankton (or a very, very close substitute) being dumped down his gullet was good enough to keep him happily distracted from the tickles in his nasal cavity for a little while.

* * *

_There isn't a Kleenex in the Universe that would be big enough… Or is there? _


	14. Of Getting Information, & Tea

**Warning: **Contains slash

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 924

**Disclaimer: **Bert the hyperspace whale, Melee Smiles Jent, and Melee's boss are mine. Everyone/everything else belongs to Douglas Adams.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Getting Information, & Tea, Without Too Much Effort**

* * *

Ford was watching Melee feed the whale by emptying a couple of very large buckets of something purple, wet, and lumpy into a doorway-like opening on her side of the room (which was, evidently, _not_ an exit) when Arthur suddenly clutched at his arm and nearly made him spill his drink.

"Ford, this is… I mean, well, it tastes just like… tea!"

"Does it?" he asked. His eyebrows firmly declined to shoot up to match Arthur's shocked expression, for dignity's sake. It wasn't all that surprising though, because Ford had already noticed that his glass (or jar, rather) of not-Janx Spirit tasted just like real Janx Spirit, even though none of the supposedly secret and quite lengthy distillery processes had been used, and just that by itself would have been too much of a coincidence to be believable.

"Yes," Arthur said, and eagerly rounded his attention on the gray-skinned alien who had prepared it. "How did you make this?"

Melee stacked the steaming buckets by the sink and shrugged, wiping her hands on the front of her voluminous apron. "It's just a matter of mixing the right flavors together. Simulate the right chemical reactions, interactions, and so on, and you can get just about any taste right. I just make 'em to fit the gustatory cells on your tongue."

"That's a pretty handy trick," commented Ford. In fact, it sounded like a low-tech approximation of a Nutri-matic without the automatic _share and enjoy_ slapped onto the tag end of every use. That in itself was enough to render the process vastly preferable, if with very limited marketing potential due to an apparent necessity of skill. "Very useful at parties. You picked that up here?"

"More or less." She leaned on the countertop, balancing on it with a complete disregard for the ominous rattle of the glass stacks supporting it. "I was working on it before but I have a lot more access to all the right materials here, as well as all the time it took to get it right. When I first started, the boss said I was a terrible chef and a worse bartender. I sure showed him, eh?"

"I'll say," Arthur replied enthusiastically. "Is there any more of this? You've no idea how hard it is to find a good cup of tea in this galaxy… or _any_ cup of tea, for that matter."

As she refilled Arthur's jar, Ford asked casually, "So, you started out here as an employee?"

"No… more like an indentured servant. I was so eager to get off my home planet," she explained, "that I, um, didn't read the fine print before sighing the contract. But, aside from the boss being a great zarking jerk and keeping me chained up most of the time, it's not so bad. I still prefer it to home."

"Ah," Ford said slowly. "So you've never exactly _tried_ to escape, have you?

Melee frowned. "If I had wanted to escape, _tried_ would not be the operative word. I just happen to like Bert too much to abandon him, that's all." She paused, and laughed. "Oh, I see. You want me to help you be un-kidnapped."

Arthur looked up from the tea he was so intently enjoying. Ford glanced over and couldn't decide which looked more appealing on him – the expression of complete rapture over the deceptively simple beverage, or the dawning comprehension of what he, Ford, had been steering the conversation towards in the past few minutes and the touch of admiration that came with it.

"That would be vastly preferable to the alternative, yes," Arthur said.

"Indeed," agreed Ford. "Think about it. We want to be rid of these mice; you're not particularly fond of this boss of yours. Perhaps we could work something out to our mutual benefit."

"We-ell…"

They waited hopefully as she pondered the suggestion.

"I don't know," she said finally.

Ford groaned. "What do you mean, you don't know?"

"Well I…" Melee paused, then frowned. She seemed to be listening intently to something, and gradually the frown deepened into a scowl. "Oh photons, he's coming," she hissed.

Arthur took a step back and glanced around in mild alarm, the suddenness of this announcement cutting through even the warm happiness of finding some tea at last. "Who's coming?" he asked. "Is that dangerous?"

"Give me those," she snapped, and grabbed the jars back from them.

"Hey," Ford protested, even though he had long emptied his. It was the principle of the matter – that and the pathetic whimper Arthur made as the last few sips of tea were taken away.

"Look," Melee told them, working quickly to clear the counter, "it'll be better for you if you don't draw attention to yourselves. Go back and lie down where you were, yeah? If you stay still, he might think you're still unconscious and leave sooner… Zarquon knows I don't want to deal with the bastard any more than I have to, and you wouldn't either if you'd met him properly."

"What about," Ford started to ask.

"Later! Go on, he's almost here…"

"Ford," Arthur said nervously. "I do think that maybe we should do what she says…"

"Oh all right."

He let Arthur tug him behind the table and chairs to the wall, right back where they'd started – with one small difference. This time they were lying close enough for their arms to touch, and Ford's fingers were draped lightly around Arthur's wrist, just brushing the pulse point.

Arthur wondered what his mother would've had to say about _that_.


	15. Of Almost but Not Quite Irrelevant

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 1074

**Disclaimer: **Most things come from the brain of Douglas Adams. Other things, I have made up. You have my permission to guess which.

I would like to thank people for reviews and things, but I'm tired… Please consider yourselves thanked, individually and personally, and be advised that I still think you're awesome regardless of the fact that almost everything else is patently untrue.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Almost, but Not Quite, Irrelevant Details**

* * *

Skit Brigit was not the ugliest person in the Galaxy by far, but if he were the sort to enter himself in an ugly contest he could have given some of the more attractive of the Vogon species (attractive, in this case, being stretched nearly past the point of acceptable use even as a relative term) a run for their money – provided that they had nothing better to do than enter ugly contests themselves.

He resembled a giant spider in that he had quite a lot of legs (but not enough to be likened to a centipede), resembled a crab in that he scuttled, and resembled an amusement park ride (one of the ones that are designed to make you so dizzy as to vomit and then require the subsequent purchasing of amusement park food, which has such a high grease-content that you will very likely vomit again) in that he could spin his upper body three hundred and sixty degrees as many times as he liked and never have to spin the other way to unwind. His eyes were like a lamprey's and his mouth was like an owl's. In the exact center of his scab-colored, rectangular face there was a nose, or what could be called a nose only by virtue of the facts that it had nostrils and was situated in the center of his face.

Other descriptions could be given, but that's probably enough to convey the point that it was not pleasant to be in his vicinity without your eyes being closed or, alternatively, a towel over your head.

Arthur and Ford were of course unknowingly taking advantage of the first option; they were on the floor, pretending to be unconscious.

This endeavor was unwittingly aided by a table and some chairs that neither of the rooms other occupants could hope to occupy, since Skit Brigit had too many legs and Melee Smiles Jent, although humanoid, was chained to the opposite wall. The furniture was clearly there mostly for cosmetic purposes – and, curiously enough, was coated in a soft, silvery resin that rubbed off easily and could be used as eye shadow in a pinch. But, as none of those present were disposed to wearing makeup, this fact went about i's business, also unwittingly, of being true, without the inconvenience of being stopped for the purpose of allowing someone to ponder it.

"Where's the cargo?" Skit Brigit snapped without preamble.

His voice was raspy, like a jet of pennies being shot out of a cannon at high speed into a wall of nails at a thirty-seven degree angle, only down a few octaves. It put Arthur's nerves on edge and caused him to tense up. Ford, in order to cover the fact that it rather put him on edge as well, rubbed his fingers almost imperceptibly against Arthur's wrist, trusting to luck that this would be more reassuring than ticklish.

"Hello to you too," Melee replied in a carefully bland voice. "If you mean those two guys over there, they're over there, right where you told me to dump them."

He grunted disinterestedly, and in all probability didn't even glance at them.

"You ought to be grateful," he said in a voice that would have rubbed sandpaper the wrong way, "to have any work at all. It'd damned lucky I decided to take that shortcut…"

"You're grateful to have the money, you mean. I _always_ have work to do."

"Oh, do you now?" He snorted unpleasantly, and from their places on the floor Arthur and Ford could hear spindly legs scratching and shuffling against each other as he moved. "Then how come you haven't been doing it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said stiffly.

"I'm talking about all the Magrathean planetary engineers who keep calling me about the wormholes you let this big lump drop all over their factory floor. They're cranky buggers right after they wake up, and I getting tired of their bitching and moaning!"

"Well, that's probably because you told me to turn off the collection net I was using so we wouldn't get anyone's beard in a twist over whether or not we were even allowed to be there in the first—"

There was a small thump, and it could be extrapolated from the following sound of breaking glass that someone had just had a jar bounced off their head. "Ow! Would you stop that?" There was another thump, this time of a more organic nature. "Ow. _Ow!_ If you thigk thad pidchig by dose isdt doig be ady favors—!"

"Listen, you useless twit," Skit Brigit gurgled, "I've got important customers now who are looking to be imminently rich beyond a lot of people's wildest dreams combined, and the smoother things go the more payment I might be able to wrangle out of them. So things had better go smooth, understand?"

"Or whad?" she challenged, possibly quite foolishly.

"Or I will take your stupid nose as an end payment and release you from your contract directly into—"

The conclusion of his sentence probably held some relation to the great cold vacuum of space, but was lost forever when the discussion was interrupted by an ill-boding tremor.

"—What was that?"

"How da hell should I doe? _Ow_ – bleeding Zarquon…"

"Just keep an eye on the cargo," Skit Brigit said. "And _don't_ go anywhere."

He scuttled out of the room.

Ford waited a moment, then opened his eyes and lifted his head. When he was sure the coast was clear, he gave Arthur a nudge and sat up.

On the other side of the kitchen Melee was stomping around at the end of the chain connected to her ankle shackle, straining to reach a distant pile of jars and sending the ones she could reach to the floor with various thumps and clinks.

"What are you doing?" Ford asked, partly because he was curious and partly because it seemed like the next best step to something productive.

"Going somewhere," she snapped. "I'm taking you up on your offer." She rubbed violently at her nose, which was flushed a darker gray than the rest of her skin, as was a similarly discolored spot on her forehead. "Useless, am I? Well, we'll see just how useful I am. Without me here he'd be chewed and spat out by the weekend. If that long… Where," she demanded, "did I put that Gagrakackan acid?"

* * *

_Will Melee ever find the particular jar she's looking for amongst all the others? What is the source of the mysterious tremor? And which is more likely to appear next, the white mice or the Great White Handkerchief? Find out... or possibly not... in the next chapter. Eventually.  
_


	16. Of Acid

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 325

**Disclaimer: **(See chapters one through fifteen.)

This is short. Sorry, more tomorrow.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Acid**

* * *

"Did she just say acid?" Arthur queried.

"Yes," replied Ford. "She just said Gagrakackan acid." The tone of voice he used to make this reply implied that this was both a resourceful and potentially hazardous use of patently non-household chemicals.

"Oh." Arthur pondered this for a moment. "Is that anything like battery acid?"

It would be quite reasonable to say that his thought processes, what with everything they had recently been requested to take and run with (for example, the dogged pursuit of his brain by two white mice, and, for another example, the dogged pursuit of his mouth by that of Ford Prefect's), were not at their best. Otherwise, he might have asked something in some way pertinent. Ford graciously decided to do him the favor of pretending he hadn't heard.

Gagrakackan acid is, in fact, very unlike battery acid. The merest hint of its vapors is enough to melt metal.

Which was exactly why Melee Smiles Jent, once she had found the jar in which she kept it, unscrewed the plastic lid just enough to waft a small misty puff in the general direction of the shackle locked around her ankle. A portion of the shackle obligingly dissolved, and she prized it off and threw it in a corner.

She straightened with a pleased exclamation of self-satisfaction, stretched her legs, and marched over to where Ford and Arthur were sitting on the floor.

"Hold still," she instructed, and proceeded to do almost the exact same thing two more times.

'Almost' because, first of all, she was no longer freeing her own ankle but those of two other people whom she didn't even know particularly well, and secondly because, as she was administering a fatal dose of acidic vapors to Arthur's shackle, the ground, the walls, and in fact the entire whale experienced another shudder. Not having expected this, she tipped over backwards.

The lid of the jar she held was still slightly unscrewed.


	17. Of Unpleasant Calamity

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 317

**Disclaimer: **See chapters one through fifteen.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Unpleasant Calamity**

* * *

The room was not shaking at the moment. Regardless of this fact, just about everything in it was.

Melee had fallen against the jars holding up the counter, which had then proceeded to topple. The countertop was flipped onto the floor with a loud _thwack_ and then quickly covered with an avalanche of glass containers, only four of which broke. From these came an odd handful of various sizes of nails and screws, a small three-eyed lizard which quickly scurried off to hide in a corner, one third of an old yellow washcloth, several packets of honey roasted peanuts, and a small bag of suspicious-looking white powder which was actually only confectioner's sugar.

(The last two items, for reasons that are not likely to become apparent at this or any point, had been stored in the same jar.)

A fifth jar also emptied its contents, not because it had broken but because a thin puff of mist had disintegrated its lid while it was in the process of hitting Melee very hard on the head. The contents were several gallons of ice water, which got Ford's shoes wet. He voiced his displeasure, as the cold water soaked into his shoes, in a way that made Arthur's ears ring.

In addition, there was a small hole in Arthur's pajama bottoms, right next to where his shackle had been. But this wasn't important enough to be noticed right away.

The room started to shake again.

"Ford," Arthur yelled, for lack of anything better, over the sound of thousands of glass surfaces clinking together, "what's happening?"

"How should I know?" Ford yelled back. "Ask her, she lives on this thing!" He jabbed a finger at Melee, who was clumsily but surely picking herself up from the debris.

The room stopped shaking again, and Melee fell over.

"Wow," she said. "Everything's… spinning… Wow-wow-wow… Ow?"

"We may have a problem," said Ford.

* * *

_If you've seen the TV series, when you read "Melee fell over," picture something like Trillian falling over right after "My white mice have escaped!" and "Nuts to your white mice." Not really important, I just thought of that while rereading this right before posting and it made me laugh.  
_


	18. Of Trauma Induced Synesthesia

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 662

**Disclaimer: **See chapters one through fifteen.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Trauma-induced Synesthesia**

* * *

Arthur was worried. In fact, he was incredibly worried.

He was worried because their only hope for safety lay in the hands of a gray-skinned woman of indeterminable species. Unfortunately, she seemed to be mentally out to lunch at the moment.

Melee Smiles Jent looked at Arthur, then at Ford. "The both of you," she said, "have Improbability in your hair. All over, just all over. Is it stuck?"

For a moment she watched the cloud of color swirling before her eyes, much the same way one might watch a cloud of color swirling before their eyes after, say, jumping up very suddenly after lying down for a considerable amount of time. She waited for it to go away and was mildly surprised when it didn't.

Her head hurt. Something squirmed in her ear in a way that tasted distinctly like a small fish, though she couldn't think of what it might be. It did not strike her as at all odd that 'taste' should not have been the appropriate sense with which to notice and judge this, and that was, by and large, exactly what the problem was.

She waited for the hazy colors to at least stop swirling so much. Through them she could make out the two hitchhikers she had just freed, but they didn't seem to be doing much more than spitting colors, first at her and then at each other. It was very confusing. She decided to mention this.

"It's very confusing when you spit colors everywhere like that," she said, and shivered violently. The air on her skin tasted very cold, very cold indeed.

They paused, then turned to each other and began spitting even more vivid colors than before.

Beneath her feet the ground tasted very wobbly, and a bit whale-ish. Her nose tasted itchy in sympathy of… something or other. She shivered again, and went cross-eyed trying to see the cold drops of water running down it with the pores of her skin.

One of the hitchhikers draped something warm-sounding over her shoulders, and suddenly Melee was aware of someone trying very hard to get her attention.

"Oh," she said. "Hello there…"

Arthur looked at her hopefully. After all, he had draped his dressing gown over her in the hopes that this would help her focus on what was going on. It was a long shot, but stranger things had happened. "Yes, hello. Are you all right?"

"How odd! I didn't know you could talk."

"Er…"

"How are you doing that, by the way? I can't seem to see your mouth…"

"Forget it, Arthur," Ford said. "She's talking crazy-talk. Must have a concussion or something."

"But what are we going to do?" Arthur fretted. He reached out and clung to Ford's shoulder as another rumbling tremor worked its way through the whale, feeling especially vulnerable now that he didn't have the familiar comfort of the dressing gown. "It sounds like it's about to swallow us!"

"Oh yes, it does sound a bit like that, doesn't it," Melee said pleasantly.

Ford shot her a dirty look, because Arthur's hand was tightening and making his shoulder hurt. "You're not helping."

"I don't shake like this when _I'm_ about to sneeze, though," she continued heedlessly. "Are you sure?" She tilted her head to one side as if listening to something, her black hair coming loose and sticking wetly to the back of her neck.

"Let go," Ford said to Arthur. "Come on, we've got to figure out how to get out of here."

"Yes," Melee agreed with surprising enthusiasm. "A safe place sounds like quite a good idea! You seem to be the smartest of… however many there are of you. I have three I've been keeping, not for any special occasion, see, or anything like that, and a lot more than three, actually, but I can see three of them from here…"

"Safe?" Arthur repeated frantically. "Where's safe?"

"Don't panic!" Ford reminded him.

"Table!" declared Melee.

* * *

_"__The both of you," she said, "have Improbability in your hair. All over, just all over. Is it stuck?"_ -- is probably my favorite thing I have written ever.

_In other news… or not, since this is totally not news, really more of a query… Has anyone ever stopped to wonder what would happen if Arthur somehow and suddenly got really, really high?_

_I would do something seriously awesome for anyone who writes something involving that. Seriously super awesome._


	19. Of Ready, Set, Go

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 893

**Disclaimer: **See chapters one through fifteen.

A big round of applause for TheRimmerConnection, for doing research for me on a thoroughly inane topic – without which, my insanity would be almost completely inaccurate.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Ready, Set, Go**

* * *

_Fallyneep wood, says the_ Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, _is unique in that it sheds silvery dust on everything that touches it long before and long after it is cut from the tree to which it belongs. This makes it particularly undesirable for building anything that is hoped to be at all functional, but Fallyneep powder has become a popular import on many mildly fashionable planets. _

_It is surprisingly popular in ski resorts, particularly on the icy, snowy, and mind-hurtlingly beautiful planet Allosimanius Syneca. This is due to the questionable claim that Fallyneep powder, if properly applied, can protect the wearer from the glare shining off the snow banks and ice fields. _

"_Fallyneep Face", as it has been christened by an annoyingly alliterative person (name withheld), is fairly simple to achieve. One merely has to rub the sparkly powder all over one's face, or faces, with the exception of a wide rectangle at the top of each cheek. These rectangles will, for all but a few species, be the darkest color left showing, and since dark colors have been scientifically proven to absorb light will absorb the fierce glare of the sun and thus protect the eyes. _

_Scientists have gone to great lengths (mostly with the reward of being able to say "I told you so" in mind) to prove that the benefit of Fallyneep Face is, at best, minimal, and that the logic behind it was conceived of by an idiot (name withheld), but it continues to be used regardless. _

_A once-popular and therefore now-forgotten professional ski instructor said in an interview which no one paid attention to even at the time that at least it looks better than that 'eye black' stuff that some athletes still use on a few of the more primitive planets._

* * *

"Ford," Arthur said, sounding very strained, "there's glitter all over your face."

"Yes," replied Ford, "I know."

"Now your eyes won't get zapped," Melee told them, wiping her hands on her face and apron and leaving long silver streaks.

She had threaded her thin arms through the sleeves of Arthur's dressing gown (which she was still wearing, mostly by virtue of the fact that Arthur was far too bewildered to take it back) but hadn't tied it closed. It flapped around as she picked her way quickly back through the puddle of cold water on the floor to where the majority of her jars were, and then back with three of the larger ones.

"It's very important," she said as she worked the wormhole from the lip of the first jar, "that you hold onto the edges. They're invisible, you see?" She giggled. "Or, rather, you don't. But anyway, they're hard to find again if you don't know how to look, so don't get lost."

Holding (they assumed) one side of the wormhole in each hand, she stretched it. The resulting noise was the same they'd heard earlier, in the bathroom: like something being rubbed very quickly back and forth over a latex surface. Arthur found himself associating it with Ford pressing urgently against him and blushed, though no one could tell because it was hidden by a thick coat of sparkly wood resin.

When she'd stretched it as far as her arms could go she beckoned them over. "Well come on, one of you. Put your foot by my hand, there…"

"Is this safe?" Arthur whispered to Ford.

Ford shrugged. "Maybe." The room started shaking again, this time with a cataclysmic feel of finality. "Do you have a better idea?"

"No…"

Ford crossed the room and put his foot by Melee's hand.

"All right, and hold it up here, by my other hand."

"Hang on a minute," Ford said, and reached into his satchel. He pulled out his towel, looped it around a solid bit of empty air next to her hand, and wrapped both ends tightly around his wrist. The towel undulated a bit (because, as everyone knows, towels always behave more excitably in hyperspace) but not in a way that upset his grip. "Okay, got it."

She let go and stretched another wormhole for Arthur, who, again, blushed and was, again, not found out for it. He placed his foot as instructed and held nervously to the top of it with both hands, feeling like he was standing right on the edge of a vast and terrifying Nothing.

"Now it's very simple," Melee told them. She had to shout to be heard over a sudden roaring noise – or, from her point of view, to clear away some of the colors crowding her eyes – and perched with practiced ease on the lip of her own wormhole. "We're going to hang on the edge of somewhere else until whatever's happening finishes happening and it's safe to come out again. Don't let go, and watch out for the flash when you go through!"

"What happens if we let go by accident?" Arthur yelled.

Melee grinned at him. "Great! And, all set? Go!"

She lifted her feet, swung forward, and disappeared.

"Arthur," yelled Ford, "just do it, would you! You don't want to die just when things are getting fun, do you?"

"This isn't exactly my idea of fun, Ford," Arthur yelled back.

Ford, however, had already disappeared.

"Damn," Arthur said to himself, and let himself fall forward into the wormhole.

A few seconds later, Bert sneezed.


	20. Of a VBF

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 252

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of a VBF**

* * *

There was a very bright flash.

Ford Prefect found himself hanging by the towel over a very wide-looking ocean. There was no land in sight. He wondered how long he would have to hang in mid-air like this, and it occurred to him that he had no way of telling. He fished his copy of the _Guide_ out of his satchel to see if it had any answers.

It didn't. But, it told him, while this was rather unhelpful, it was at least _definitively_ rather unhelpful.

He put the _Guide_ away and wondered where Arthur had ended up.

* * *

There was a very bright flash.

Melee Smiles Jent settled her feet on the tip-top of the highest mountain on Vesuvius Zeta, humming the color indigo to herself as most of the planet around her glowed a dull red. She swayed a little in the warm, churning air, but stayed firmly latched onto the top edge of her wormhole. Part of the dressing gown's right sleeve had ended up on the other side, and it had promised to let her know when it was safe to go back.

So she waited, basking in the planet's eruptive climate, and hummed as the rest of the dressing gown flapped around her in the sluggish breeze.

* * *

There was a very bright flash.

Arthur Dent blinked.

He blinked a great deal more.

When his eyes finally managed to make sense of his surroundings, he was so surprised that he let go of the nothing he was holding onto.

* * *

_I am really excited about the next chapter. You have no idea. And, past chapter twenty-one I have basically nothing written yet, so beyond that neither do I. Whoosh!_


	21. Of About A Year Ago

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 1444

**Disclaimer:** Hitchhikers belongs to Douglas Adams. The Faust quote belongs to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

I would like to say that this chapter is the reason I started writing this story, but my lying skills are being better put to use convincing my family that I am not insane.

The pronunciation failure about a third of the way down the page is my own and I was completely sober at the time. It predates the first chapter of this story, but that's okay because it's mostly a flashback anyway… which is not technically a spoiler because you should be able to infer that from the title anyway.

And if not, I have just saved you some confusion. You may now rest easy knowing you won't end up like that poor fellow who asked Simon Jones why his character was specified as a "five foot eight descendant" at the beginning of the first episode.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of About A Year Ago**

* * *

The last time Arthur had been in the pub down the road from his house had been the day his house had been knocked down to make way for a bypass (as well as his planet, for nearly the same reason, though hardly on the same scale).

Not that time, but many times before that, Arthur and Ford had been at that same pub getting very drunk.

* * *

"Where w'going nex'?" Ford slurred, slinging an arm around Arthur's shoulders as the barman kicked them out for the night.

Arthur stumbled, partly because he was almost, but not quite, as drunk as Ford but also because his friend had misjudged the location of his shoulders by several inches and, in consequence, fell on him.

"Huh?" he asked, steadying himself (and therefore both of them) against the outside wall of the closing pub.

Ford squinted into the distance. Not any particular distance, just a distance. He was in no state to be very choosy about which one. "Wrrrrrr," he replied vaguely.

"I think," said Arthur, making a valiant attempt to sound sober, "I think I'd best be going home…"

"Hrrrrrmmmm," burbled Ford.

"You should come too," Arthur added charitably. He was beginning to suspect, if dimly, that at this point Ford couldn't have found the way out of a paper bag if there were great bright neon signs there helping, much less the way to his own flat. "You can sleep on the sofa."

"I can unconscious on the sofa," Ford corrected, then lurched to the left. "O-kay, le's go then!"

"No-oo, I think 's this way…"

Luckily it was late (or early) enough that there weren't any cars to worried about as they stumbled down the road together, a confused tangle of flailing limbs.

Every once in a while one of them would fall over, and then the other would do the same to keep him company. More often than not it was Ford who fell first. After a while Arthur wondered if he was doing it on purpose, because every time Arthur half-landed on him he would burst into wild giggles and flail in a particularly unhelpful way which Arthur, if he hadn't known better, might have mistaken for groping. By the time Arthur had convinced himself he knew better and hauled them upright again, the giggles had subsided and they continued on their way until the next mishap – usually about forty-something seconds later.

Arthur stopped in front of his gate and inspected it blearily, trying to remember how to open it while Ford batted at the flowers growing up the side of the fence with one hand. "Ford, d'you…" He trailed off, because Ford's other hand had wandered up and started playing with his hair. "Er, what're you doing?"

Ford grinned, a white flash in the darkness. "Fighting the floating roses."

"Fighting the froze—" Arthur blinked. "Flighting the fl— fliffify fliflafluhfla." He paused, gathered himself, and took care to enunciate properly. "Fighting the floating _what_?"

"Roses!"

"But…" He tilted his head in profound puzzlement, getting the feeling he was missing something. Ford was giggling at him again. "Those aren't roses."

"You're right!" Ford laughed. "It's Faust!"

"Those flowers are Faust?"

"Yes!" He leaned over and inspected the gate, then kicked it open. "'S unlatched, c'mon."

"Have you read Faust?" Arthur asked dubiously.

"I _read_," replied Ford, "…a packet of breakfast cereal!"

He collapsed into giggles again, and Arthur couldn't help rolling his eyes (albeit with a certain unshakeable fondness) as he hauled his extremely drunk friend up the path to the front door.

"The day you start making sense," Arthur said as he searched for his house keys, "I'll… well, I'm either gonna get very drunk, or never touch another drink again…"

Ford shot him a rather askew look which implied that he didn't believe a word of it, and also that he would probably be passing out soon. "Which?" he asked, just as Arthur found his keys and tried to fumble the wrong one into the lock.

"Dunno, I'll figure that out 'fit ever happens."

Several minutes later the door swung open and they shuffled inside, Arthur aiming them in the general direction of the sofa. After he dropped Ford off there he would crawl into his own bed and sink into oblivion for the night… _Sounds great_, he thought with a yawn, _'m tired_.

He couldn't quite figure out, a minute later, how exactly it had happened. The next morning he wouldn't remember much of it either, and after a year the memory would only be a convoluted sense of déjà vu in a bathroom cubicle at the far dead-end of time.

The important points – which were, by some freak of cognition, regurgitated from the depths of Arthur's unconscious memory some time not very long after that particular instance of déjà vu, at the prompting of his very improbable arrival at a destination he had not expected – are these:

Ford fell over, again, and Arthur was pushed backwards over the arm of the sofa with Ford more or less along for the ride.

In a moment of panic Arthur tried to keep them both from bouncing off the sofa and landing on the floor, and to this end he threw one arm over the back of the sofa and another around Ford. They landed, bounced, and settled into the sofa cushions.

When Arthur's head had stopped spinning and he decided that he had blinked at the ceiling quite enough, he tried to move. He couldn't.

"Ford?"

Ford mumbled something unintelligible.

"What?"

He mumbled it again, nuzzled his cheek against Arthur's chest, and passed out.

"_Ford_…"

Arthur shook his friend, but Ford's quiet, even breathing didn't change. His only response was to shift his legs a tiny bit, but, as one of his legs was nestled up against Arthur's groin, that wasn't particularly helpful.

Blushing bright red in the darkened room, Arthur failed to bite back a started "Eep!" that he was very glad Ford wasn't awake to hear. He was also extremely thankful that Ford was in no condition to notice the _other_ reaction, which he was quite content to blame on the alcohol and the unexpected contact and _not_ on a sudden prompt to question his own personal preferences.

Slowly, carefully, Arthur let go of Ford, braced himself against the cushions, and eased closer to the far end of the sofa. This put more distance between his groin and Ford's wayward leg, but had the unfortunate side-effect of dragging himself under the rest of Ford's body weight. Arthur let out a whimper in spite of himself, wondering how that much pressure could be generated by someone so thin.

This led to the thought that maybe he was all muscle, which had the indecency to make the pressure worse.

_If this is what being very drunk does to a person,_ Arthur thought with a particular sort of vague indigence that only an Englishman in such a situation could muster, _then that's it. No more time spent in the bottle for me…_

He made it to the end of the sofa and would have breathed a sigh of relief, but Ford, who was still very deeply asleep and very definitely had his head in Arthur's lap, took the liberty of sighing for him.

Arthur made a noise somewhere between a groan, a moan, and a very quiet shriek, and flailed his way over the arm of the sofa. He slid onto the floor and, having thus completed his very haphazard journey across the length of the sofa, curled up on the carpet. One of his hands crept down of its own accord and rubbed against the bulge in the front of his trousers until the pressure relived itself with a spine-tingling jolt, and he settled into a pleasant drowsiness that carried him gradually into sleep.

In the morning he woke up very hung over and very puzzled as to where exactly he and Ford had been the night before, how he had ended up falling asleep on the floor next to the sofa, and what exactly had happened inside of his pants sometime during the night. Ford, of course, had no idea (not that Arthur even considered bringing up that last part), but he _had_ enjoyed some very pleasant dreams.

* * *

About a year after that night, Arthur Dent dropped from the wormhole he'd just traveled through and found himself sitting on what was apparently the same sofa in what was apparently the same room, still thinking about Ford pressing against him and still blushing, and for no particular reason suddenly recalling the first time Ford had seriously infringed upon his personal space.


	22. Of Deceptively Innocuous Trouble

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 493

Sorry this chapter took me so long. Flollop.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Deceptively Innocuous Trouble**

* * *

Arthur couldn't believe it. He was home. On Earth. Sitting on his old, comfortable sofa. The late morning light shone warmly through the half-drawn curtains, and outside there was the indistinct sound of no bulldozers whatsoever.

Feeling giddy, he jumped up and went to the door to double check. Nothing yellow for miles (except for the sun, but as that was quite a lot of miles away it hardly counted). He found the morning paper on his front step.

It was dated the day after the Earth had been destroyed.

But that was impossible.

Wasn't it?

He went back inside and set the paper on the small side table next to the sofa (which he had acquired and placed a few days after the incident with Ford passing out on him, and a good thing, too; any earlier and that evening would have included a particularly painful landing). Then, with a growing sense of foreboding, he turned to the sofa itself and inspected it.

There didn't appear to be any wormholes on it, near it, or above it. _Well of course there wouldn't be_, Arthur chided himself, _they're invisible, after all._

He took off his slippers and climbed cautiously onto the sofa cushions, then waved his hands searchingly through the air. They met with absolutely nothing.

Arthur climbed back down, frowning to himself – because, after all, no one else was there for him to frown at.

Was it even just the tiniest bit possible that he had dreamt everything?

The yellow bulldozers, the yellow Vogon constructor fleets, the poetry… The _Heart of Gold_, the planet Magrathea, and, most recently, the facilities at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe… Maybe it had all been a hallucination brought on by an evening of bad food and good (or at least strong) drinks.

A gigantic wave of relief hit him as his brain accepted this possibility with such ease that he really should have known better. He wandered through every room in the house, taking each as further proof that he _was_ safe, that he _hadn't_ been in mortal danger quite a lot of times in the recent past, and that tea was _not_ a foreign concept to most people after all.

Gradually he became aware of a knocking sound, and realized that someone was at the door. It seemed like such a distant concept, as if it were something he hadn't had to deal with for a while – but no, he convinced himself, that was just his brain still being a bit caught up in a particularly vivid dream.

He went back to his front door and opened it.

"Hello, Arthur," said Ford cheerfully. "Feeling better?" He stepped forward as if about to come in, then paused, squinting. "You've got stuff on your face."

Arthur jumped and automatically brought a hand up to his cheek. It felt vaguely powdery, and when he pulled his hand away his fingers glinted silvery-white in the sunlight.


	23. Of Crazy? I was Crazy Once

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 1124

Beware the lurking malice. Beware, I say!

And yes, I _am_ secretly a mattress. Voon.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Crazy? I Was Crazy Once…**

* * *

Arthur looked at the sparkly tree resin on his hand, then back at Ford. Suddenly his hopes of it all being a dream were crumbling, and now instead of giddy he was merely terribly confused. "How did you get here?" he asked.

"I walked, of course," answered Ford, starting to look a little concerned.

"But… But you went through a completely different wormhole! They couldn't all lead to the same place, could they?" He glanced around nervously, half expecting a gray-skinned, double-elbowed alien to jump out of the shadows and offer him peanut butter flavored bubblegum.

Ford frowned. "Arthur, you sound a bit hysterical. Are you feeling all right?"

"No," Arthur replied helplessly as he spiraled onto new heights of confusion.

"I thought as much," Ford said. "Mind if I come in?"

Arthur stepped back and let him in, frowning faintly. Something was slightly off, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.

Part of it, surely, was that Ford wasn't wearing the same clothes as Arthur had grown accustomed to seeing him in. The shirt might have been the same, but so little of it was showing that he could hardly tell, what with the gigantic orange cable-knit sweater (the sleeves of which were rolled up several times to avoid totally eclipsing Ford's hands). His trousers were pale purple, and what tiny bit of his tie was showing suggested polka-dots. Overall it made Arthur want to ask his friend if he was color-blind or if the rules of fashion had suddenly become even more unreasonable than they already were – which was only unusual in that he hadn't felt the need to do so for a while.

Another part of it was definitely that Ford's ever-present satchel appeared to be missing. That meant that the _Guide_, the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic, and his towel weren't within reaching distance – which Arthur could not consciously recall ever having happened before.

But there were other little nagging things too that Arthur couldn't place.

All he could come up with by way of explanation was that something strange was going on, and this was not particularly helpful since, as of recently, _everything_ that happened to him was some kind of strange or another.

Ford strode purposefully down the hall to the kitchen, looked around, and clicked his tongue disapprovingly. "How long have you been awake, and you haven't even put a kettle or some clothes on…"

Arthur was frowning in earnest now. "I hardly see what that has to do with anything," he replied. "I've been wearing these pajamas for some time now, if you'll recall."

"I'm just being practical, that's all." Ford filled the kettle with water and set it on the burner. "You must have a colossal hangover by now."

"No," said Arthur, "but I'm starting to get a headache."

"Oh, still a little drunk, then? That's hardly surprising—"

"Look, Ford," Arthur interrupted, "what the hell is going on? I haven't been drinking anything… except that tea, and, all right, it _was_ blue, but it tasted fine and it didn't make me feel funny or anything, so I don't know what all this fuss is about. You'll have to slow down and explain it to me."

Ford had turned and was leaning back against the kitchen counter, fixing him with a sympathetic look. "All right," he said slowly.

_He looks good,_ Arthur thought, staring at him. _Leaning like that. It's very…_ He stopped and pushed the thought away. This was definitely not the time to think confusing thoughts and make things even more bizarrely inexplicable.

"The other night you were at the pub, raving drunk, insisting that the council was planning to knock your house down. I went to check in the morning, which was yesterday, and they weren't, so I came back from the planning office only to find you in the pub again, this time insisting that green bug-eyed aliens were planning to knock your whole _planet_ down."

Arthur felt his eyes widen and his jaw drop. "But they _did_," he exclaimed. "You were there. You saved me!"

"I brought you home from the pub, if that's what you mean," Ford replied evenly. "There weren't any aliens."

"But _you're_ an alien! From… from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse! You told me so yourself!"

He waited for the surprise at having been rumbled flicker through Ford's eyes, but it didn't. A sudden chill ran down Arthur's spine.

"Calm down, Arthur," Ford said soothingly. "It was just a dream. You were so drunk you can't remember what actually happened, and your mind is making things up to fill in the blanks."

The similarity of this to what he had been thinking earlier struck Arthur squarely in the chest, and he sat down heavily in a kitchen chair. "But… what about this?" he asked, bringing his hand back to his face. "It came from alien wood. Rubbed right off a table. You… you had it on your face too…"

Ford sighed. He reached forward – Arthur froze, but Ford only touched the powder and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger.

"It looks just like regular eye shadow," he said. "I don't know where you got this much of it, but it's certainly more creative than dancing around with a lampshade on your head." He sat in the chair next to Arthur and put a hand on his shoulder, looking at him earnestly. "Come on. Do I _look_ like an alien to you?"

This was an unusually distressing question, because Arthur was just gullible enough that he had never questioned the assumption that Ford was human until the day he'd told him otherwise. At the time _that_ had happened, it had seemed to make a lot of sense – once Arthur had accepted, if by necessity, the sudden intrusion of flying saucers, aliens, space, and Improbability into his life, anyway. However, what Ford was very calming telling him now _also_ made a lot of sense, this time in a much more comfortably mundane sort of way.

Or at least it should have been comforting. Probably. Arthur wasn't sure because he was too distracted by a very peculiar sense of loss.

_But why_, he wondered, _when so many miserable and bewildering and outright _dangerous_ things happened?_

In response, his brain cued up images of Ford kissing him in a bathroom cubicle at the end of time, and Ford kissing him on the floor of a hyperspace whale named Bert. There was no additional information, because his brain apparently felt that the memories should speak for themselves.

Only… it was starting to look as though they might not be memories at all.

"You're right," Arthur said softly. "You couldn't be an alien. That's… that's crazy."


	24. Of Living With a Dream

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 503

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Living With a Dream**

* * *

Arthur watched Ford carefully for the next hour until his friend left – for a dress rehearsal of Twelfth Night.

_I can't remember him ever actually being in a play before_, Arthur thought, taking a sip of tea. Ford had always presented himself as an actor, but specifically an out of work one.

_I can't remember ever seeing him blink this much,_ he thought, taking another sip. Ford was blinking like a normal person, sometimes even more frequently when Arthur forgot that he was and stared back out of habit.

_I can't remember him ever not putting something alcoholic in with his tea,_ he added, with another sip. Ford had added only milk and sugar to his cup, and there was nothing extra in the milk – Arthur had checked.

_I can't remember,_ Arthur thought as he drained his own cup,_ ever having a dream that vivid. Or_, he added, just to be safe, _a dream _this_ vivid. _But he couldn't quite bring himself to seriously doubt that this was really happening.

So he waved goodbye to Ford as the ginger-haired man left, thanking him for making the tea and wishing him a broken leg at rehearsal. Then he went back inside, curled up on the sofa, and went about the business of being depressed.

(Marvin would have approved. Insofar as Marvin ever approved of anything. Actually, he probably would have criticized him on his form.)

He was home, and he was safe. The problem was, this was exactly the sort of thing Arthur had desperately wanted ever since the planet Earth had been demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass; but, in getting exactly what he'd wanted, he'd lost something he never would have expected to have in the first place, let alone miss desperately.

He missed Ford. Not the Ford who had just left, but the one who was almost the same but had turned out to be a writer for an absolutely insane book in an even more insane Universe and occasionally kissed him for not much more reason than a general feeling that it would be a good idea – the one whom he was coming dangerously close to thinking of as _his_ Ford. The Ford here was nice, but not… there was something… It just wasn't the same. This was not a Ford who would lead him off on crazy adventures, and Arthur was startled to realize that he actually _wanted_ that – if only because Ford would be there.

Yes, all right, _his_ Ford. Arthur gave up on that particular battle and pressed his face into the arm of the sofa with a groan. He didn't know what was happening inside him, but it felt as though everything was being rearranged. The sofa wasn't helping.

The problem was, if it had all been a dream then now he was stuck with this reality. And if it hadn't been a dream, he didn't know how to get back to it and he was _still_ stuck with this reality. Whatever it was.


	25. Of Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 709

To Americans who care, I hope you had a nice Forth of July. To everyone else… I hope you had a nice Friday.

You should all go tell TheRimmerConnection how awesome she is and poke her to write the next chapter of Revelations 1 and 2 very, very quickly, before I suffer a fatal flailing-from-suspense attack. (flails)

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch…**

* * *

"Well," Ford Prefect was saying as he dangled semi-helplessly in midair above a very wide-looking ocean, "I will admit that I never suspected seahorses had such complex inner lives, but I don't see what berating me about it will do to solve your problems."

The small animal that had decided to take irrational offence at his presence reared up, bobbing and spitting short streams of water as it spoke.

"Oh," it snapped, "so, so what you're saying is, since I'm not going out and getting my problems solved right away, this is just a great big waste of time for you, is it?"

Ford's eye twitched. He had finally reached the end of his patience.

"All right, that's it! You've been yelling at me for the past three hours and I'm tired of listening to you. My time would be much better spent listening to a very attractive ape-descendant babble about tea and his silly planet being space dust, so why don't you just—"

At that precise moment, a gray-skinned hand shot out of midair and hauled him up by the towel. He disappeared.

"Typical," the seahorse muttered, "just typical. Syngnathiformes are people too, you know!" it raged at the empty sky.

* * *

"You have stuff on your face," Melee told Ford as she set him on his feet.

"I know. You put it there."

She blinked. "Oh. I did, didn't I? Well, I suppose it didn't hurt."

Ford pried his stiff fingers out of their death grip on his towel and flexed that hand gingerly. "Are you done being crazy then, or are you just taking a short vacation from it?"

"Both, probably." She looked around the room, which was now completely empty. Then something seemed to occur to her, and she shrugged off Arthur's dressing gown and handed it to Ford.

He took it, frowning. "Where is Arthur?" he demanded.

A full two seconds after he'd taken the dressing gown it suddenly shocked him, setting off additional alarm bells.

Melee squinted into the empty air above her head, then stood on her toes and reached up to grab something. "Don't worry, he can't have gone too far."

"If you've lost him…" Ford began and trailed off threateningly.

Distressingly panicked thoughts were shooting through his brain at the suggestion of Arthur being lost. What he'd meant by _You wouldn't want to die just when things are getting fun_ was really more like, _Don't you dare let anything happen to yourself now that I've figured out just what sort of interest in you I _really _want to take_. Or— Zarquon, what if he _had_ died, somehow?

_No,_ Ford told himself firmly, _Arthur isn't completely helpless. He's got his towel with him, after all._ Then he noticed the towel half-hanging out of one of the dressing gown's pockets, and paled.

"_I_ haven't lost anything," Melee replied calmly, stretching the wormhole she'd just grabbed. "I told him not to let go. Anyway, you should be thanking me. Another few seconds and we'd have all been sucked out into space."

Ford twitched. "That couldn't have happened to Arthur, could it?"

"Oh no, this would have blown away if there hadn't been someone just on the other side weighing it down."

She held the wormhole open and looked at him expectantly.

"Well, go on. Go in and get him."

"Right… Right."

Ford took a deep breath, wrapped his own towel reassuringly around his neck, and straightened his jacket. If he was going to rescue Arthur, he wanted to look as calm about it as possible. Letting on that he had been worried would only confuse things, not to mention firmly convince the human that there _was_ something to worry about and possibly cause him to panic, which, depending on the situation, would probably be less than helpful.

Melee watched this, and appeared to be trying very hard to keep a straight face. "So you really care about this guy, huh?"

"Whatever gave you that impression?" Ford asked, giving her a look of infinite coolness.

A smirk escaped her control. "Nothing, I just think it's kind of cute. I won't breathe a word, I promise."

Ford considered this and decided that he could live with it. He nodded curtly and stepped toward the wormhole.


	26. Of Glissando

**Pairing: **Ford/Arthur

**Words:** 1079

I am experiencing epic computer fail, and my uncle, who actually knows how to fix these things, won't be back from vacation for a while. It's kind of all the same, as I will be hopping on a bus to Disneyland tomorrow night and gone until Wednesday anyway, but… with my laptop dragging like this, I feel like an Arthur stuck in a room with an imitation Ford. T-T

Anyway, here's the chapter.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Glissando**

* * *

_The _Guide_ states, somewhere or another, that, just as a small group of people can work through the how, why, and where stages of civilization, a single person left to their own devices during a particularly stressful time can work through a wide range of emotions in about the time it would take to reheat those leftovers that have been sitting in the back of the refrigerator for the past week. _

_Because this is not a very pleasant experience, there is usually some alcohol involved. _

* * *

Arthur lay very still on his sofa and tried to think of the most irrelevant thing he could in order to take his mind off things. It was silly and wouldn't solve a thing, but his eyes were red and starting to sting and didn't really care much about whether he was being silly or not.

His mind happened upon "tulips", and turned the word over within itself speculatively. _Tulips. Tulips… Two lips. Ford has two lips. Ford has two very nice lips. Ford…_

Arthur sighed. It was no good.

_What would Ford do in a situation like this?_ he asked himself.

The answer was obvious. He stood and headed for the drinks cabinet, transitioning seamlessly from anxiety to depression as he mixed himself a gin and tonic.

A few glasses later, he was sitting on the floor with several bottles arranged around him for easy access. Arthur had never found himself in this sort of predicament on his own before, but then he had never felt quite this unreasonably upset before either.

"The problem is," he said aloud to the empty room, "that this isn't supposed to be upsetting at all. I'm home. The Earth is intact, my home is intact…"

He poured himself another glass of… something. He wasn't really paying attention. His voice rose heatedly as he began to warm to this line of thinking he'd stumbled upon.

"That's supposed to be enough! This is supposed to be just great! 'S not bloody fair…"

He sipped at his drink and winced as it worked its way down – though it wasn't nearly as bad as half the things Ford had mixed or ordered for him over the years, especially recently.

"It's _not_ fair," he insisted vehemently, urged on by the drink. "Whatever's guiding the course of events – fate or some alien intelligence or just the Universe itself – shouldn't be allowed to turn my life upside-down and then attempt put it back together again without any sort of apology at all."

He scowled and took another sip.

"And neither should Ford! What the hell was he thinking, doing something like that? Just to make everything that much more confusing, I shouldn't wonder. Well, what am I supposed to do about it? If there is anything I can do… if it even happened. But of course _he_ never thinks about things like that, _he_ never really plans ahead, only ever as far as the nearest alcohol and a girl to dance with…"

And there he paused, because if Ford liked girls so much then why was he suddenly kissing _him_?

Arthur had occasionally noticed what he supposed could be called girlfriends, each hanging around Ford for only a few days to a week at a time. He had never noticed any men doing the same.

_Good_, a part of his brain said vehemently, surprising him into spilling his drink.

He'd never cared much for the sort of women Ford had tended to go for; they had been beautiful all right, but quite often they had also been giggly, far too credulous, and generally very annoying. Very often they had also been easy to ignore while they were there and forget about once they were gone, which he supposed was more or less the point. But this idea of _men_ made Arthur want to jump up and tell imaginary gentlemen that no, Ford _wasn't_ interested, because… because…

"Because he's got me?"

Arthur carefully mixed himself another gin and tonic, because when he was paying attention he had a tendency to be rather unoriginal, and stared down into it.

"Well… maybe that's not so unreasonable. We've known each other for five or six years, after all, and he saved _my _life. Me… out of all the other people he'd met… He could have _just felt like_ choosing anyone else, but he didn't." Arthur cast a small, sad smile down into his glass. "Not that it makes much of a difference now," he whispered.

Tears threatened to consider welling up in his eyes, but he willed them away. After all, hadn't he always been taught that there was no use in crying over spilt milk? And that grown men didn't cry in the first place? And… and lots of other things that meant he should turn his unruly emotions to indifference, remember his stiff upper lip, and get on with the business of living a calm, rational, and overall quite humdrum life.

One that no longer seemed very appealing at all.

Arthur drained the rest of his drink and began to prepare another one. "Well, too bad," he told himself dully. "There's nothing else for it. It's out of my hands – as if that's anything new."

He closed his eyes and lifted his refilled glass in a blind salute.

"Goodbye, Ford," he murmured, and drank. _And goodbye to… whatever it was we might have been._

"Goodbye? But I've only just arrived. And I'm not leaving without you, anyway, otherwise there'd be no point in being here."

Arthur spat a good half of his gin and tonic across the room, and accidentally tipped the rest down the front of his pajamas. Hacking in the liquid he'd just tried very hard to breathe, he opened his eyes and turned his head to see Ford lounging calmly on the back of the sofa, his towel hanging in midair just above him.

Familiar Ford. Familiar, alien Ford with his familiar, dramatically clashing argyle sweater and striped jacket and big leather satchel, and his smile that was just a little too alarming to be quite normal, and his eyes that were just a little too blue to be quite human. He did look a little different than usual, but then they both still had a great deal of silvery powder on their faces.

"Ford," Arthur cried. "It's you!"

"You were expecting someone else?"

Ford stepped casually down from the sofa, and Arthur was too relieved to worry about footprints on the cushions.


	27. Of Mismixed Feelings

**Pairing:** If you don't know by now, you should really see a doctor about that selective amnesia. It really can't be healthy.

**Words:** 678

Disneyland is the most magically awesome place on Earth. You can experience excitement, adventure, and really wild things, all while keeping your hands, arms, heads, and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

I'm putting out (ha) another offer of something seriously super awesome for anyone who writes something involving a small child walking up to Arthur or Ford sitting on a bench and sticking a finger in their ear (because I saw something like that happen five times over the course of three days) or Zaphod Beeblebrox on Splash Mountain (because I saw someone who liked almost but not quite like a blond Mark Wing-Davey in the line ahead of me for that).

As for the last offer of something seriously super awesome, fear not, Fizz the Eccentric and WhatWldMrsWeasleyDo, I have not forgotten you. I am merely very slow.

(flail)

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Mis-mixed Feelings**

* * *

The first thing that Ford noticed upon coming out the other side of the wormhole, after the afterimage of a very bright flash faded from his vision, was that Arthur was not in any sort of danger at all. In fact, their surroundings very much resembled the inside of Arthur's house in Cottington.

The second thing he noticed, after he jumped down from the sofa and walked over to the wayward Earthman, was that Arthur was almost, but not quite, drunk.

"I see you've been coping," he said dryly, offering a hand to help Arthur up.

Arthur's face worked through a few different emotions before settling on happy-to-see-him-but-still-vaguely-uncertain. "Was I not supposed to?"

Privately, Ford had mixed feelings about this. He rather liked Arthur panicking, actually, because as long as there was no imminent danger lurking about it was somewhat entertaining and gave them both something to do – Ford the task of convincing him that there was nothing worth panicking over and Arthur the panicking itself. He had been looking forward to testing out kissing as the latest in convincing arguments… And perhaps he was just the tiniest bit disappointed that apparently Arthur didn't necessarily need him in order to keep calm.

At the same time he was relieved to find Arthur alive and well, because to discover otherwise would have been very distressing indeed. This relief was, of course, dutifully hidden to prevent wear and tear on his cool factor.

"No," he replied, "coping is good."

Arthur took the proffered hand and seemed surprised to find himself a bit wobbly on his feet. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I seem to have coped my way through, uh… at least five drinks."

"Five?" Ford frowned. That wasn't terribly like Arthur. At least, it wasn't terribly like Arthur without something to celebrate or some friendly peer pressure or a large amount of stress, or any combination of those. "You didn't think I would rescue you?"

"Yes… No… I mean… I couldn't find the wormhole," Arthur explained fumblingly. "I just assumed it was gone, so it didn't occur to me that you would be able to."

"Never assume anything, Arthur," Ford told him, guiding the tipsy human back towards the sofa.

"So, it's all real then?" Arthur asked, dragging his heels. "You being an alien and the, the Earth being disintegrated, and having been built for the benefit of a few white mice in the first place, and… everything? It wasn't a dream or drunken hallucination, it's all true and really happened?"

"Yes, it really happened."

"All of it?"

"Yes, Arthur, all of it." Ford was beginning to grow impatient.

"You're sure?"

"_Yes_, I'm sure."

Arthur blinked, and his face fell. This either had something to do with the blatant irritation in Ford's tone, or – as Ford took it, since he couldn't imagine why Arthur would require so much assurance on this point, and therefore didn't – because Arthur had secretly been hoping for a different answer.

The latter possibility was quite disappointing, because Ford had been sure that Arthur had at least enjoyed _parts_ of their recent adventures. The gleaming white interior of the Heart of Gold, for instance, or the exotic atmosphere of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, but most especially being kissed. No one, in Ford's personal and quite successful experience, had ever expressed any interest in forgetting _that_ –except perhaps in direct comparison to being kissed by Zaphod, but he very much doubted that Arthur would ever have (or, for that matter, want) the opportunity to make that comparison.

Unfortunately, it was the only possibility he could think of.

He stopped huffily in front of the sofa, quite annoyed that Arthur didn't seem to appreciate his rescue at all. The Earthman in question was looking rather dejectedly down at his own shoes and didn't seem inclined to look up or say anything further.

"Let's get out of here," Ford grumbled. "Unless you _want_ to stay in this ridiculous mockup of your own home… For Zark's sake, why does that crazy woman have something like this anyway?"


	28. Of at the Last Minute

**Words:** 542

My laptop is all fixed! Hopefully, anyway. :D

And now for the ominous dun-dun-dun you've all been waiting for!

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of at the Last Minute**

* * *

"Oh, and your dressing gown," Ford added disinterestedly, tossing it to him. "You forgot it, along with your towel. Really, Arthur, you should take better care of those."

Arthur was, once again, uncomfortably confused. Ford didn't appear happy to see him at all – in fact, he seemed very annoyed. A queasy feeling bubbled up in Arthur's stomach as he tried to work out why this might possibly be.

A thought flashed across his mind suggesting that this problem would be easier to sort out if only he could just have a nice cup of tea to ponder it over.

He froze, his fingers unconsciously digging into the dressing gown fabric.

"Hang on a minute," he blurted out, and turn and ran somewhat haphazardly to the kitchen.

Once there he immediately began opening cupboard doors and pulling out drawers. Ford followed at a more sedate pace and leaned against the doorframe, watching him.

"Arthur. What are you doing?"

"Tea!" Arthur replied distractedly. "There's tea here, and I'm not going back out into the Universe without it!"

"Oh for zark's sake… It's only _tea_."

Arthur stiffened and rounded on him. "If I told you," he said, his voice wavering dangerously, "that, oh, for heaven's sake, it's just a _towel_, you'd be terribly upset with me."

For a moment he looked as though he might continue, then he shut his mouth abruptly and went on with his search.

_It seems to me_, he thought dimly,_ that I should be able to find at least one tin in my own kitchen_._ Where is it?_ He was increasingly aware of Ford's eyes burning holes in the back of his head. _Where is it where is it where is it…_

"Who have you been having tea with?"

Arthur jumped, turned, and lunged for the tea tin that he had forgotten was still sitting on the kitchen table, right between the sugar bowl and the two empty cups. Also next to it was a dog-eared copy of _Twelfth Night_, which Ford picked up and eyed suspiciously.

"Er, no one," Arthur mumbled, clutching the tea tin to his chest as if it were priceless treasure. Considering how much trouble he'd had finding a decent cup of tea recently, or even any kind of cup of tea, it was. "Well, you. Only it wasn't you. But he looked like you. He just didn't quite act like you, and he wasn't an alien, and he thought I was crazy."

"…Ah."

Ford stared at him for a long moment. Arthur fidgeted.

"Well," Ford said finally, "I don't know about you, but I'm ready to get out of here."

"Then let's go," Arthur said quickly.

It was Ford's turn to look like he was about to say something else, but, in an unprecedented display of hesitation, he didn't. They walked silently back into the other room and he climbed up on the sofa, grabbing at his towel and using it to haul himself up.

And then they heard the front door open, and a voice that was almost, but not quite, Ford's called out,

"Sorry to barge in, Arthur, but I left my script here and I was meaning to return to the person I borrowed it from tonight. I found your spare key…"

* * *

_Will the script ever be returned to its rightful owner? Will Ford and Arthur ever escape? Does the author even have a clue as to how this predicament will be resolved, and will it involve debauchery on a sofa?  
_

_The answers to all of these and more may or may not be reveled in the next chapter.  
_


	29. Of Doppelgangers

**Words:** 862

No books were harmed in the making of this chapter. Probably.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Doppelgangers**

* * *

Ford dropped back onto the sofa cushions, landing a little less gracefully than he would have liked and tipping over onto his side.

"What," he hissed to Arthur, "is that?"

Next to him, Arthur sank down onto the sofa and did an alarmingly good impression of a crumpled up piece of paper.

"Well," he replied uncertainly, "it's either one of those invasion of the body snatchers things doing a fairly decent impression of you, or it's final and clinching proof that I am in fact hallucinating. I can't say which, because I'm honestly not sure."

Ford frowned. "What do you mean you're _not sure_?"

"He had a very well reasoned argument…"

"_Arthur_—"

"Arthur?"

Ford looked up and saw… himself. Only not.

The newly arrived Ford blinked at the Ford on the sofa.

Arthur buried his head in his hands and groaned something to the effect of, 'Oh god oh god why can't I just lead a normal life.'

* * *

_All hitchhikers should be aware that "normal" is a relative term and should be used with extreme caution, if at all. Arthur Dent was in fact living as "normal" a life as was personally possible, according to the reality he inhabited. _

_It has been postulated that for every set of finite possible outcomes to a situation there is an infinite number of alternate realities in which all of them, in some form or another, occur. The variation can be simple (for example, whether you have eggs for breakfast or oversleep and have to dash out late for work with a bottle of a flat Soda Stream concoction left over from last Sunday afternoon and half a packet of chocolate breath mints) or it can be complex (such as, whether you are born on a particularly hoopy planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse or on a backwater blue-green planet in an unfashionable part of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy. _

_Most people who buy into these sorts of theories also hypothesize that these alternate realities can never intersect, since two possible outcomes to the same event cannot logically coexist, though lately whether anything is ever truly (rather than merely virtually) impossible has come into question due to the invention of the Infinite Improbability Drive. _

_Others claim that this alternate reality business is a load of dingo's kidneys and staunchly ignore suggestions that, in a different reality, dingoes are claiming the exact same thing._

* * *

Ford sat up on the sofa and inspected the new Ford warily, obviously suspecting some sort of hidden malice from the way Arthur had been reduced to drunken gibbering.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Ford Prefect. I'm a friend of Arthur's," the other Ford answered, then frowned uncertainly. "Is he all right?"

Ford's eyes narrowed. "He's fine," he said dismissively. To demonstrate this, he patted Arthur on the leg. "What do you mean you're a friend of his? He would've told me if he knew anyone with the same name as mine. Wouldn't you, Arthur?"

This was more a statement than an actual question. Arthur ignored it in favor of watching the confrontation with a look of horrified fascination and a touch of queasiness, much the same way one might watch two trains rushing towards an inevitable collision if one's eyes happened to be held open with two large-ish clothes pegs.

Ford – both generally, but more specifically the one from Betelgeuse – did not like this one bit. He was finding it difficult to pinpoint the reason he disliked the other Ford so much, because actually there were several.

For one thing, the other Ford was dressed terribly, and parted his hair stupidly, and was altogether too _human_-looking. Ford felt like he was losing cool points just by being in the same room with him, not to mention sharing a name. And Arthur doubted which of them was the real Ford Prefect? Ridiculous.

For another thing, what right did this impostor have to muscle in on being friends with _his_ Earthman?

And, most distressingly, what if Arthur liked this Ford better? He had always wanted the Earth back, and his house…

What if Arthur wanted to stay?

The other Ford frowned. "Now look, I don't know what sort of game you're playing, but I _am_ Arthur's friend and he does _not_ look fine to me."

"He _is_ fine," Ford insisted coolly, "because I'm rescuing him."

"Rescuing him?" The other Ford looked around the room, noting the drinks bottles on the floor. "From what? Reality? In that case, you seem to be doing a fine job. He wasn't intoxicated when I left."

"I'm not that drunk," Arthur hiccoughed meekly.

They both ignored him.

Ford stood up, still holding the battered copy of _Twelfth Night_ which was almost but not quite entirely like the copy of the same play he'd never returned to a lending library on Earth (because he'd lost it). He advanced threateningly on what his brain had labeled simply the Impostor.

"No," he said, "but he was when I got here."

The other Ford blinked. "Are you implying what I think you're implying?"

"Sure, why not," Ford said with a shrug, and chucked the book at the impostor's head.

* * *

_If you're in the mood for something ridiculous, go and search for "Soda Stream commercial" on youtube. I suspect the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation had a hand in it. Oh, the 80s._


	30. Of the Important Thing

**Words:** 1062

Hey you lucky ducks. I was going to have this be two chapters, but about five minutes ago decided to combine them. Where have I been, might you ask? On a distant planet called… Montana, where the only interesting thing that happened was my ninety-four year old grandmother let me try her martini. But I didn't like it.

First person to correctly catch the nerdy reference to something other than Hitchhikers may, if they like, request a fic. It's a Star Wars reference. Tell me who said it in which movie and why.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of the Important Thing**

* * *

Arthur boggled as the second Ford hit the ground. The first turned to him with a slight grin and shrugged.

"It was a boring conversation anyway," he said dismissively, walking back over to the sofa.

"But Ford," Arthur protested. "What if you've given him a concussion or something? You can't just go around throwing books at p—"

He was interrupted by Ford sitting down beside him and pulling his whole head in for a kiss. It was very difficult, after all, to talk around an extra tongue. Arthur instinctively tried to lean into it, and fell over.

Almost grimly, Ford grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him back up.

"You don't want to stay here," he announced.

Arthur blinked.

"You don't," Ford continued, "because it's going to suck all the life out of you. It's _boring_. And as troubled as you are by how big you never expected the Universe to be, by now your mind is so stretched out of shape from trying to wrap around all these new things that it won't be able fit _just_ the Earth ever again."

"But—"

Ford leaned forward quickly and pressed their lips together again, just for a moment. Just enough to make it more of a clear demand for attention than anything else.

"I'm not done yet." He let out an irritated little sigh. "I really got myself into something, rescuing you the first time, because here I am rescuing you again… The next thing I know people are going to start trying to tell me that I'm not hoopy frood material any more.

"And anyway, you couldn't possibly want this—" he cast a disparaging glance at the other Ford "—when you've got me."

"Your egotism astounds me," Arthur muttered.

That was more like the Arthur he was used to. Ford grinned, secure in the knowledge that he could talk the Arthur he was used to into just about anything.

"Does it," he replied, shifting a bit on the sofa. Arthur was lying practically on top of him, which was definitely an opportunity of some kind. As a lifelong opportunist, Ford was prepared to take full advantage. "All this time we've known each other, and there are still things about me that surprise you? Sounds to me like you need to stick around and continue getting to know me better."

"It was never a question of—" Arthur managed before Ford kissed him again, this time with a different sort of demanding.

This kiss was desperately possessive, an outlet for all of the 'uncool' emotions that Ford had managed to keep out of his words and voice – attachment, worry, and a willingness to do _anything_ to get what he wanted.

And, in this case, he just happened to want Arthur.

These were, of course, rather disadvantageous sentiments for an intrepid hitchhiker trying to see the marvels of the Galaxy with only his native wit, his towel, and, quite frequently, much less than thirty Altarian dollars in his pocket. Ford realized that, but only in a 'Well, I suppose I'll have to deal with that later' sort of way. He wrapped his arms around Arthur's middle and held onto _his_ human, _his_ monkey, who no imposter would ever try to steal away if they knew what was good for them.

Arthur relaxed almost instantly, eyelids sliding almost, but not quite, shut and leaving only a sliver of dark gray visible. _All roads lead back to the sofa_, he thought dimly as Ford's tongue crept in for a taste of those gin and tonics.

After a long moment, Ford pulled back and asked, "Of what?"

"Hmm?"

"Never a question of what?"

"Oh." Arthur smiled hesitantly. "Well, I… It's not the same here. I mean, it probably would be if it weren't for _him_." He glanced at the other, unconscious Ford, a little sadly. "It's very strange… I feel more comfortable with my entire perception of the cosmos turned on its head than with everything put back in its place except for one thing."

Ford nodded. "Good."

It wasn't exactly what he had wanted to hear, but he figured it was close enough. For the moment, anyway. He glanced up at his towel, which was waving gently in the air above their heads, and then back at Arthur. The important thing was that Arthur was coming with him when he left.

Arthur noticed where Ford was looking and glanced up at the towel as well. The importance of several things was breaking over him all at once, like waves swamping anything of relative flimsiness that waves might be likely to get at – though the only thing the towel had to do with this was its associations with Ford and all the improbable things that had happened to them recently.

Between the towel above him and the sofa (and Ford) below him, Arthur clung like a particularly stubborn barnacle to the back of a leaping epiphany, sublimating his confusion, transcending Ford's apparent irritation with him, and coming to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of their almost, but not quite, nonsensical friendship.

And, what was more, he was left with a profound and vivid insight into what exactly was going on. It was very brief, but, for a moment, he understood completely.

Whatever was happening between them hadn't started when Ford had suddenly turned up in his bathroom cubicle and ended up kissing him; it had begun as far back as about a year ago, while falling over repeatedly in drunken tangles of limbs between the pub and Arthur's front gate. Possibly even earlier.

"Ford," Arthur began, "before we leave…"

Impassively cool, Ford quirked an eyebrow at him. "Yes?"

Arthur hesitated. He started to say something, then bit his lip, then placed a small kiss on the corner of Ford's mouth.

Maybe he would have said something then, but Ford's hand caught the back of his head as he started to pull away and dragged him back down, away from the clarity of his epiphany, away from air. Nevertheless, Arthur met him more adventurously than before, taking it upon himself to shyly mimic something Ford had done with his tongue earlier. He felt Ford hum approvingly, and almost broke the kiss grinning.

"Mm, very nice," murmured Ford.

"Before we leave," Arthur began again, "I just… I'm… glad you came to rescue me. Really."


	31. Of Vicinity

**Words:** 870

A bit on the higher side of PG-13, I suppose? I promised sofa debauchery, and I deliver. ;P

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Vicinity**

* * *

On the sofa, Ford Prefect indulged in a slow grin and a very expressive grope. What this was meant to express was that he was quite pleased with Arthur's sudden initiative, partly because the ape-descendant really was a good kisser when he put his mind to it and partly because it meant that Arthur wasn't going to make a fuss the way he had (attempted to) in previous similar situations.

Another thing that no-one made much of a fuss about was that the other Ford Prefect, lying on the floor a few feet away with a book-corner shaped lump on his head, was indulging in a slow return to consciousness.

The first thing he noticed was slightly muffled moaning.

He opened his eyes and blinked at the ceiling, waiting patiently for it to come into focus as he tried to sort out what in the hell was going on. Had he just been hit on the head with a book?

The moaning sound, he realized, was coming from somewhere nearby. Mildly curious as to what it was doing there while his head hurt so much, he propped himself up on his elbows and looked in the general direction he thought it might be coming from.

What he saw totally distracted him from the sore spot on his forehead.

Arthur Dent was stretched out on the sofa over a man who, by all appearances, was another Ford Prefect, and it was Arthur who was moaning – arms braced against the arm of the sofa, face pressed against the other Ford's neck, trembling from the effort of holding himself up in such a state. There were no illusions as to what that state was because his dressing gown, which ordinarily would have provided some measure of covering, had become twisted around and mostly fallen to the side closest to the back of the sofa, and his pajama bottoms and underpants were pushed down almost to his knees.

The Ford on the floor swallowed very, very hard, because he had never thought of Arthur that way before but here he was watching someone more or less _himself_ with his hand around the man's unfettered erection, tugging firmly. Arthur moaned again, and Ford could see his eyes half closed, his teeth worrying his bottom lip as he attempted to catch his shaky breath without making too much noise. That, Ford reflected as he stared, was just so _Arthur_ – modest almost, but not quite, to the point of self-reproach. But there was nothing reserved about the movement of his hips, rolling and juddering like an epileptic pestle in an uneven mortar.

He wanted to say something, like "Ah, hello, I'm still here," or "You really shouldn't do that on the sofa, there'll be a stain and I know you don't like stains on the furniture, Arthur." Really, he did. Because then they would stop. But… then they would stop.

On the sofa, his double was shifting against Arthur's leg and stroking him faster, eyes heavy-lidded and mouth stretched into a wide, lewd grin. _Lech_, Ford thought vaguely, though the uncomfortable tightness of his own pants made him question who this was actually directed towards.

It took everyone in the room, including himself, a moment to realize that he'd actually said that out loud.

Arthur looked up, saw him, and, after a split-second's confusion, blushed bright red. Sofa-Ford glanced over, annoyed.

"Do you mind?" he grumbled.

Floor-Ford blinked. "I honestly couldn't tell you," he replied truthfully.

"Yes, well. Get your own."

Just shy of mortified, Arthur was pulling his pajama bottoms up hastily, covering bits of himself which, had said bits had any say in the matter, would not be covered. Both Fords watched this with, to a certain extent, regret and, to a certain extent, resignation.

"Well, I suppose we'd best be getting back," said sofa-Ford, giving Arthur a proprietorial pat on the shoulder and floor-Ford a stay-right-where-you-are look.

He helped Arthur stand and steady himself on the sofa cushions, then pressed a quick kiss against the human's flushed cheek.

"Hey, don't be embarrassed, all right? He's just a strag from an alternate universe, it's not like you're ever going to run into him again."

"That's not really the point," Arthur mumbled, but allowed his hands to be guided up to the towel hanging in midair above them. He started to pull himself up, then cast an awkward glance over to the Ford on the floor and said, "Er, bye," before disappearing through the wormhole.

"Bye," floor-Ford replied weakly, then blinked. "He forgot his tea…"

Sofa-Ford glanced down at the fallen tin. "So he did." He picked it up and paused for a moment, straightening his jacket.

There was a moment of silence as they stared each other down, neither quite sure what to make of each other.

"Find a better way to part your hair," sofa-Ford said finally. "And lose that sweater. You look like an overly skinny Snooklegaaden."

And with that he grabbed onto the dangling towel and hauled himself up and out of sight, leaving the Ford on the floor to ponder what was so undeniably attractive about Arthur Dent, what was wrong with his hair, and what the hell a Snooklegaaden was.

* * *

_(Snooklegaadens first appeared, I believe, in __Demus__'s_ Beware Jealous Betelgeusians,_ which I hope she doesn't mind me referencing and you should all go read.)_


	32. Of Tension

**Words:** 566

Bah, I am sorry. I was planning to post this on Saturday but instead I was hit in the face with Bible.

…

I think it's funnier if I don't explain that.

* * *

**Zen & the Art**

**Of Tension**

* * *

Because Arthur was climbing up through the wormhole, he was quite surprised when gravity reoriented itself and he fell face-first into the floor of a Caparliter whale's mouth. This was made even more alarming by the fact that he had just been momentarily blinded.

Shortly after that, Ford followed and experienced the same sort of surprise directly on top of him.

Melee Smiles Jent released the wormhole with a rubber band-like snap and grinned down at them.

"Hey guys. Have fun?"

"Hmm," Ford said somewhere in the vicinity of Arthur's neck. "Yes and no."

He propped himself up on his elbows, and Arthur missed the weight on his back.

"Where were you trying to send us?" Ford continued sharply. "The planet of annoying evil twins?"

She shrugged. "I had a minor head injury and Bert was about to sneeze. When do you think I had time to consider where I was or wasn't sending you?"

At that point Arthur decided to cut in, because the floor wasn't terribly comfortable and Ford's… well, product of their unfinished business on the sofa, was pressed distractingly against him. He was also a little miffed that this didn't seem to be distracting Ford in the slightest.

"As comforting as that definitely isn't," Arthur said in a strained sort of voice, "can we please just go back to the Restaurant at the end of the Universe?"

He fidgeted as he said that, until Ford took the hint and rolled off of him. Again Arthur was struck by a surge of wistfulness and disappointment as the physical contact between them dwindled to a mere bump of Ford's knee against his side as the Betelgeusian climbed to his feet, and then not even that.

"I mean, it's over isn't it? The mice are gone? We're not kidnapped anymore…"

Arthur was actually asking Melee this question. But, as he asked it, he was looking at Ford.

"Hmm?" Melee said. "Oh. Yeah, I can send you back to where you were picked up. Maybe not the exact same place same second, I'll have to dig through the nets…"

Ford lifted an eyebrow at Arthur and inclined his head towards the door.

Arthur looked back in mild confusion.

"The collection nets, you know, for catching the wormholes Bert excretes, they should have caught all the ones he sneezed out just now. If I can find the right one… hmm…"

Ford blinked slowly and deliberately, and nodded at the door again.

Technically, it wasn't really so much a door as a kind of partition in what must have been a massive oral cavity. But Arthur preferred to think of it as a door. It was little things like that which, if he couldn't pass them off as little white lies to himself, might make his brain explode.

Ford rolled his eyes.

"Well, we'll leave you to that, then," he said, grabbing Arthur by the arm and dragging him out of the room.

"Er," Arthur mumbled as they emerged into what appeared to be a long hallway, but technically wasn't. "Do you think she can actually send us back?"

"I wouldn't put money on it," Ford replied absently. He stopped, looked both ways down the corridor, and headed for the next nearest door-like opening. "But, really," he added, pulling Arthur into the empty room and pushing him up against the nearest available wall, "who knows what might happen?"


	33. Of Things

**Warning: **Wall porn! But still a T rating.

**Words:** 1006

Geez, I'm sorry it took me so long to write this. And to think, this bit was the part I was most nervous about writing… It actually wrote itself rather quickly.

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**Zen & the Art**

**Of Things the Narrative finds more Interesting than Other Things**

* * *

Arthur had a fairly good idea of what was about to happen. He also found, to his mild surprise, that he didn't even care that where it was about to happen was somewhere in the belly of a large whale.

"Ford," he asked, allowing his hands to fall very conveniently down to Ford's hips, "are you going to be doing this sort of thing terribly often from now on?"

Ford answered him by kissing him on the lips for the nth time in as many days divided by n, which probably meant yes. Probably. One never really knew with Ford – but Arthur didn't have much interest in stopping to question it.

He was far more interested in the way Ford was pressing against him, flattening him to the wall which was just organic enough to have a slight give and not be as uncomfortable as, say, a wall made of plaster. Which might have been disconcerting were Arthur given time to think about it, but the parts of his brain that weren't already wonderfully distracted merely registered it as comfortable and left it at that.

From down the hall, there was a series of thuds and a loud yell. They ignored it, because Ford was just getting to the good bit of unbuttoning Arthur's pajama top – the part where it would be off already if not for things like arms through the sleeves and being pinned against a wall, and he could lean down and nip at soft skin – and tugging off his own jacket and sweater because there was just too much heat. Arthur helped pull the sweater over his head, and let out a little moan as Ford nuzzled against his neck in appreciation.

The tea tin, jammed awkwardly into Ford's jacket pocket, hit the floor with a muffled _clang_ sound that they also failed to pay attention to.

"Ford," Arthur groaned, "I, I really want to say… thank you, for rescuing me… again…"

"You," Ford replied in between kisses as he worked his way back up to Arthur's mouth, "are… quite… welcome. Mmm." He ran his fingers briefly through Arthur's hair, leaving some of it standing on end. Because part of the key to having a good time, he had discovered during his travels, was coming out of said good time with spectacular sex hair. Then his hands slid along Arthur's bared sides and down the back of his pajama bottoms for a nice grope.

Arthur jumped, and then laughed breathlessly against Ford's lips.

"These have got to go," Ford murmured, pushing the Earthman's pajamas and underpants down. They slid down to puddle at Arthur's feet.

"Ah…" Arthur shivered and, almost (but not quite) shyly, hooked his fingers on the top of Ford's trousers. "And these?" he asked.

"Yes, those too," Ford agreed, and drew little patterns on Arthur's hips as Arthur fumblingly but enthusiastically undid the button and zipper and sent the clothing of Ford's lower body the same way as his own.

Arthur moaned and slid down the wall a bit as Ford pressed against him again, this time with nothing between them to dampen the electric sensation of contact. Ford moaned back and encouraged the obedience to gravity until Arthur was sitting on the floor and he was more or less in his lap, and every movement sent intimate parts of them brushing and rubbing and knocking together. Legs were in slightly awkward positions, but that wasn't really a problem because that meant moving to get more comfortable and that meant more friction.

They both, for a split second, regretted the fact that Ford's shirt had not been unbuttoned as well, but then Arthur made an astounding cognitive leap and just rucked it up out of the way. He ran his hands up and down Ford's back, tracing his spine with fingers that trembled with every jerk of hips. Ford's hands were in his hair again, his breath coming in starts and stops near Arthur's ear, and every touch that resonated through their bodies seemed to say, _I want you, I want you, I think I might even need you_.

The epiphany Arthur had stumbled upon earlier returned briefly, to add that, as much as Arthur would be lost in the Universe without Ford, Ford's life would be rather aimless without him as well. Arthur whimpered at the realization – which he was going to forget the specifics of in just a moment – and wrapped Ford in a tight embrace.

Ford's hands tightened in Arthur's hair. "Zarquon," he breathed, not quite a moan and not quite a gasp, rolling his hips instinctively.

"Ford," Arthur groaned, holding him righter in the hopes that he'd do that thing with his hips again. He did, and they shuddered and came together.

For a moment, they didn't move except to breathe. Big, winded breaths, like runners who had just finished a sort of marathon. Arthur could feel sweat pricking his scalp and upper lip, and a warm, wet spot on his stomach. Ford's forehead was resting against his shoulder, and as their breathing calmed he lifted his head and regarded Arthur with warm blue eyes.

"Good?" he murmured.

Arthur blinked. "Good," he repeated, starting to grin stupidly. "Good. Yes. Very. Very good. Yes." His recollection of the English language was rudimentary at best, but secretly he was impressed with himself that he'd retained it at all. On top of the little ripples of pleasure still working their way through his body, there was something about the impatient urgency, the _need_ of the whole thing that just made his brain melt. He really did hope that this sort of thing would continue to happen, because he liked it rather a lot.

"Good," Ford replied, and kissed him again. _Really very nice_, he decided. _I'm going to have to make a habit of this, aren't I?_ He gave a mental shrug and deepened the kiss into something perhaps more languidly possessive than would be considered cool, and didn't really care all that much. _Mine_, he thought contentedly.

* * *

_Wasn't that fun._

_I would just like to add… because this is the sort of thing that goes through my head sometimes when I read things… So very often two male characters thrown in bed (literally or figuratively) together for the first time seem to go straight to the penetrative sex. Which can certainly be done, depending on the context. But intercrural sex is just as fun too! And it doesn't require stretching certain places or twisting around awkwardly or even having to fumble for the lubricant. _

_That is my public service announcement for the day. Thank you and good afternoon._


	34. Of Towels

**Words:** 444

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Zen & the Art**

**Of Towels**

* * *

After a while, Ford sat back and stretched, reminding Arthur rather of a cat that had just had a nice nap in a warm patch of sunlight.

Ford looked around lazily, then reached to grab his towel and used it to wipe at Arthur's stomach. He chuckled as Arthur clumsily fished his own towel from somewhere about his dressing gown and began to do the same for him.

"A towel's rite of passage," Ford murmured with a grin. "You're a real hitchhiker now."

Arthur blinked. "Oh?"

"You haven't _really _broken in your towel until you've used it for something involving sex."

"_Oh_," Arthur replied, blushing.

Ford gave him a reproving look. "For zark's sake, Arthur, there's no use in being embarrassed about it now. It happens. And you'd best get used to it." He took the Earthman's towel, folded it sticky side in, and handed it back, still smiling that throat-endangering smile. "Not least because I want to do that again as soon as there's a proper bed to drag you into."

With a start, Arthur was suddenly quite aware of their surroundings. Luckily the room was empty, so the largest quantity of anything there to be noticed was of nothing.

"Oh, yes, because, ah, this is a wall."

"Yes," Ford agreed, still grinning. He stood up and stretched again, and Arthur was content to sit and enjoy the view. "What do you say we get dressed and go see how likely it is that we'll have a chance to get undressed again soon?"

Arthur blinked. "Oh. Yes. That's… very practical, I suppose."

He had almost forgotten that Melee Smiles Jent was (supposedly, at least) still looking for the appropriate wormhole to send them back to Milliway's. Not, he thought a little wistfully, that the restaurant was likely to have much in the way of beds.

"Quite. I wonder," Ford mused as he picked up his trousers, "if our host is at all related to any ballpoint pens."

"… What?" Arthur asked, looking extremely confused.

"Ballpoint pens," Ford explained, "have an infallible sense of wormhole navigation. That's why they disappear so often -- always slipping off to a planet inhabited by other ballpoint pens, where they can have their own ballpointoid life-styles."

"Ford," replied Arthur, "sometimes I really do think that knowing you might be hazardous to my sanity."

"What? I'm not making it up, it's in the Guide. Anyway, it'd be pretty useful if she were. An infallible sense of navigation is a good trait to have when navigating, and I'd like to get off this whale as soon as possible."

This last statement, at least, was something Arthur could agree with completely.

_

* * *

(I was briefly considering that Ford should say something along the lines of 'Let's blow this popsicle stand,' only that's a little ridiculous, even for Ford. So my brain supplied me with, "What do you say let's get dressed and blow this whale." And then I died.)_


	35. Of Shampoo

**Words:** 821

I am so awesome that even though my laptop suffered a massive virus-plosion the other day, I borrowed another computer so I could post! Happy holidays, everybody.

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* * *

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**Zen & the Art**

**Of Shampoo**

_

* * *

_It wasn't long before they were dressed again, nor was this a feat that required very much effort seeing as they'd been in too much of a hurry to remove anything that wasn't immediately in the way of things.

"Ford," Arthur asked just as they were about to leave the room, "do you think we'll actually be able to get back to the Restaurant at the end of the Universe?"

Pausing in the doorway, Ford shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe. Do you think that's strictly necessary, though?"

Arthur blinked. "Necessary? Aren't you worried about never seeing Trillan or Zaphod again… Well, Zaphod…"

"Hmm," Ford commented.

"I suppose we don't _need_ to," Arthur said with a sigh. "It's just that, well, as far as I know Trillian and I are the last of the human species, and it'd be nice to keep in touch. But either way, I'd rather like to be somewhere that's not here and not too disagreeable at some point in the relatively near future."

Ford shrugged again. "We'll run into them again eventually, I'm sure. Zaphod has a habit of turning up. Oh, and speaking of tea—"

Arthur was about to point out that no one had even mentioned it, but then realized what Ford was talking about.

"Ah!" he yelped, taking the tea tin Ford was holding out to him and clutching it protectively to his chest. It struck him as quite touching that Ford, despite seeming generally exasperated with all those sorts of little non-hitchhiker sensibilities and attachments, had gone to the trouble of holding onto something like that for him. Suddenly feeling even more secure about what they'd just done against the wall, Arthur smiled and spontaneously gave Ford a kiss on the cheek.

And, of course, Ford tilted his head and turned it into a rather involved kiss on the mouth, which was almost, but not quite, nearly as surprising as it should have been – which was, given the circumstances, not much.

"You're welcome," Ford told him several moments later. "Shall we?"

"Um." Arthur blushed a little. "Shall we what?"

Ford chuckled. "Go and see if our batty host has found us a suitable wormhole to travel though. And, if she hasn't, well…" He plucked at an invisible ball of lint on the sleeve of Arthur's dressing gown. "We could always come right back here. What's that saying you used to have on Earth… Lather, rinse, repeat."

"…Ford, those are shampoo bottle instructions."

There was a short pause.

"Don't you like shampoo?" Ford asked, sounding genuinely puzzled.

Arthur, not knowing quite how to respond to this, sputtered for a moment. Then Ford rolled his eyes, kissed him to shut him up, and hauled him out into the corridor.

"Oh," said Melee Smiles Jent as they entered what was for all intents and purposes the kitchen, "hello. I was wondering where you two'd gone off to. You missed some excitement – shall I tell you about it?"

"No," said Ford.

"Fair enough," Melee replied. "'t? itemou two'y entered what was for all intents and purposes the k rolin an argument over, a series of unseem?"*

"Um… What?"

"Oh, that was just a glitch, it's nothing. Anyway," she continued as if this was perfectly normal, "I found a suitable wormhole for you. The time is a few minutes to the left and the actual distance is a few minutes away, but it's on the same probability axis."

"Probability axis?" asked Arthur.

She smiled at him. "Never mind that, it's nothing too important. Or, if it is, you'll find out eventually. Probably."

It was then that Ford realized he was holding Arthur's hand, at which point the hoopy thing to do would've been to let go and pretend to assume that no one had noticed (which Melee probably had). But, instead, he talked himself into the idea that it would actually be far cooler to avoid drawing attention by not doing anything about it, and Arthur's hand stayed held.

Arthur, without consciously realizing it, understood the mental negotiations behind this, and was so comforted that he failed to question (out loud) what the 'suitability' of the wormhole actually was.

They said their goodbyes in a way that was not particularly tearful in any way, shape, or form, and Ford and Arthur stepped through the wormhole. Still holding hands, under the pretense – one of many in Ford's growing list of excuses for the totally unhip display of attachment – that it would ensure that, wherever they ended up, they would at least know where to find each other.

* * *

(Melee Smiles Jent went on to found an elite guild of drinks-mixers, invent the game of asteroid golf, and breed a new species of lobster.** This actually has quite a bit to do with any number of things, but, since all that is far too complicated and difficult for anyone to actually care about, nothing further will be said about that.)

* * *

_*I don't know how that gibberish got in there, but it was so ridiculous that I just had to leave it in. XD_

_**Can you tell __I've just read Mostly Harmless__?  
_

_Where will Ford and Arthur end up? Will they end up making out again? Will they ever get back to the restaurant, and will Arthur ever have a chance to taste the steak he tried so very hard _not _to order?_ _Find out, or not, in the chapter I plan on posting tomorrow._


	36. Of the Car Park

**Words:** 150

Short, but… well, it's short. The sweet part comes tomorrow. ;P

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Zen & the Art**

**Of the Car Park**

* * *

Arthur blinked, trying to encourage his eyes to adjust faster.

"Ford," he said uncertainly, "where are we?"

It took Ford a few moments to reply, not for lack of an answer but rather because it seemed that the answer should, by all rights, be more complicated than it actually was.

"We're in the car park," Ford told him finally.

Arthur blinked again. "The what?"

"The car park. Outside the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."

Arthur's vision cleared, and he looked around and saw that Ford was absolutely right.

"Is it safe?" he asked nervously.

"Is anything?" returned Ford. He started for the entrance to the restaurant, tugging on Arthur's hand. "Only one way to find out."

As they entered the restaurant, Ford discretely let go of Arthur's hand.

Off in the distance, a robot they hadn't bothered to notice had made it halfway to the nearest phone booth.


	37. Of Playing Lookout

**Words:** 319

Happy New Years, everybody. :)

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Zen & the Art**

**Of Playing Lookout**

* * *

"I see them," said Arthur as he peered around the doorframe into the main dining room. "Trillian and Zaphod, I mean. I don't see either of us… Didn't she say we'd get here a little while before we left?"

Ford, leaning with his back against the gaudily decorated wall, shrugged. "Consider the source. But you wouldn't anyway. That's how these sorts of places are always set up, or visiting more than once would be overcrowded and prohibitively confusing."

He tapped his foot while Arthur continued playing lookout anyway. Then he started fiddling with the strap of his bag, because his hands felt oddly restless. A waiter carrying a tray laden with drinks went past, just out of reach, and Ford ground his teeth together. He glanced at Arthur.

"This would go a lot faster," he said impatiently, "if we just go and _find out_ if we're in the right place or not."

"But what if we aren't?" Arthur fussed. "You weren't there for the worst part, last time."

"So what if we aren't? There's not much we can do about it now," Ford pointed out. "As long as we haven't ended up in a Universe without alcohol, it's nothing we won't be able to adjust to."

Arthur gave this due consideration, then sighed.

Ford recognized this as a sign that the human would, if not agree with him, probably not protest.

"All right, we're going then," said Ford, pushing away from the wall and starting into the main dining room.

Three steps later, he paused and turned back around to face Arthur.

"Wait," said Ford, grabbing the front of Arthur's dressing gown and hauling him close for a kiss.

Arthur made a small noise of surprise, but, on the whole, didn't feel he had anything to complain about.

"Okay," said Ford, nipping at Arthur's lips as they parted and looking, if nothing else, considerably more relaxed. "Now we're going."

* * *

_Not the end yet. I'm really, really going to try for forty-two chapters. ;P_


	38. Of One for the Road

**Words:** 89

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Zen & the Art**

**Of One for the Road**

* * *

They made it about a fifth of the way to the table before Ford started getting antsy again. He spotted another secluded stretch of wall and dragged Arthur to it.

"One for the road," he said, running a hand down the Earthman's neck and down along his chest inside the dressing gown. His eyes, Arthur noticed, were bright, bright blue – they were all he could see as Ford kissed him.

A moment later Ford stepped back, patted Arthur on the shoulder, and said, "All right, _now_ we can go."


	39. Of One More for the Road

**Words:** 129

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Zen & the Art**

**Of One More for the Road**

* * *

Another fifth of the way along, Ford pulled Arthur behind an over-laden dessert tray. It was a bit of a bumpy landing, considering that the tray was less than four feet tall; he suddenly found himself obeying the force of gravity in accordance with the Betelgeusian hanging from the front of his dressing gown and landed somewhat painfully on his hands and knees. Ford had landed on his rear right between Arthur's legs and was showing no signs of letting go.

"One more for the road…"

He tugged Arthur down and kissed him again, winding his hands through short, dark hair.

"…Ouch," mentioned Arthur when he was given another chance to breathe.

"Ouch? Why?" Ford asked. "I don't bite."

He helped Arthur climb to his feet, and smirked.

"Often."


	40. Of Repitition

**Words:** 115

I do apologize for the shortness of these. It is a copout, I am aware. Less than a hundred words, one of them – sheez, what was I thinking.

But you know, if I hadn't gone around announcing forty-two chapters or bust the story would be done already, and there would only be thirty-nine because I wouldn't have thought to go back and write these bitty ones.

Which is exactly why I am _not_ going around saying I might write a sequel some day and that I might even have gone so far as to find a fitting title for it. That would just get everyone's hopes up, and should be saved for when I completely and irrevocably lose what little is left of the rest of my mind.

Instead, I can only offer another bitty chapter and the vague hope that yellow, brick-like ships that nevertheless hang in the air like dead swans in a pond do not appear on the horizon any time soon.

Please try to ignore the fact that this author's note is in fact longer than the actual bit of story to follow. Hopefully they are more or less equally entertaining – though, of course, in different ways.

**

* * *

Zen & the Art**

**Of Repitition**

* * *

The next time, their cover was a large potted plant.

"One more—"

"Ford," Arthur interrupted, "you're starting to repeat yourself."

"Am I?" Ford nipped at Arthur's lips. "You must be catching."

"How very – mmph—" Arthur pushed him away a bit, albeit reluctantly "—flattering, but we're never going to get to have dinner at this rate. Not that I really _mind_ any of this, but it's starting to get a bit ridiculous. What's got into you?"

"Nothing," Ford insisted, reminding Arthur very much of his _Nothing's the matter_ right before he'd ordered them six pints and announced the imminent destruction of Earth. But he wasn't exactly given a chance to ask about it.


	41. Of Any Particular Reason

**Words:** 224

**

* * *

Zen & the Art**

**Of Any Particular Reason**

* * *

"Ford," Arthur protested as he was dragged off to the side yet again, "is there any particular reason you keep doing this?"

"A couple, actually," Ford replied. He leaned casually against the complete wine list (minus volume three), which towered above even Arthur. Two additional stacks shielded them from sight of most of the restaurant. "For one thing, our steaks haven't arrived yet."

"So?"

"They arrived," Ford said, "right before I left to look for you."

"Oh." Arthur frowned. "But neither of us are at the table. Are you sure—"

"Arthur, I've explained this part before and I don't feel like repeating myself. Which brings me to my other reason…" Ford trailed off, smiled, and, when Arthur was least suspecting it (least being, by this point, a relative term), gave his bottom a good feel. "I'll leave the particulars of that to your powers of deductive reasoning to sort out."

Arthur allowed himself to be pulled slowly closer. "Ah. Ford, where exactly do you think I _keep_ my powers of deductive reasoning?"

Ford grinned in a way that was somehow a mix of unsettling and thrilling. "No idea," he said in a low voice. "But we have some time to kill, and I'm sure I'll be able to find them."

Meanwhile, his hands were doing all sorts of interesting things.

"R-right," said Arthur.

_

* * *

I meant to post this yesterday and the last chapter today, because I'm going to Montana tomorrow. Instead, I'm posting this chapter now and will post the last chapter in a few hours. Flollop._

_This chapter's place-do-duck-behind-for-secret-smooches-(because-not-secret-smooches-wouldn't-be-as-hoopy)-and-Simon-Jones-knows-what-else was inspired by Zaphod's asking the waiter for "volume three of the wine list" in the TV series. Its one of those itty bitty details that go by so fast you almost don't have time to laugh about it that I love so much._


	42. Of Returning

**Words:** 293

**

* * *

Zen & the Art**

**Of Returning**

* * *

"In the bathroom, you said? Just as well. I don't think the Universe is going to be ending for a while yet."

Zaphod Beeblebrox shot a perplexed look at his rapidly disappearing semi-cousin, which only Trillian noticed, and shook his left head. "What's with him?"

Trillian shrugged. "I've given up on trying to guess when it comes to you two," she said.

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" asked Zaphod. "I'm just trying to enjoy my steak here, man, and the last thing I need while I'm trying to digest is everyone flipping out about where someone not as important as me is or isn't."

"Maybe you should concentrate on your steak then," suggested Ford.

"Well yeah, it's a good steak, but… Wait—" Both of Zaphod's heads snapped around, and even Trillian appeared rather startled. "Where in Zarquon's name did you two come from?"

"Oh, we just got back," Ford answered casually. He slipped into his chair, motioning for Arthur to sit as well, and picked up where he'd left off on his meal.

Arthur sat, and smiled helpfully. "Yes, that's right."

"But… you just left," said Zaphod, sounding confused.

Also mildly perplexed, Trillian glanced back and forth between the direction they'd left and the direction they'd just arrived from. Ford watched this carefully, and was rather pleased to note that Arthur wasn't paying any attention to Trillian at all.

"And the bathrooms are in the other direction, I thought," she said.

Ford shrugged, swallowed a nice bite of steak, and waved his next bite, which was still on the end of his fork, around in the air in a vague kind of gesture.

"We took a complicated exit," he said simply.

Arthur coughed politely into his wine glass, as if agreeing.

* * *

The End

(Or is it?)

* * *

_Wow. Forty-two chapters. Twenty-six thousand, five hundred and fifty-three words of story. _

_It's been fun. ... Well. At times, for me anyway, it's been an uphill slog both ways in the snow, but the snow usually turned out to taste like blue raspberry slushy so that was all right. _

_I'd like to thank TheRimmerConnection for being an awesome beta and putting up with my special brands of insanity and indecision._

_I'd also like to thank the following for the awesome reviews (because sometimes the only thing that kept me writing was the knowledge that if I didn't keep posting one of you might figure out where I live and do something drastic): Frizz the Eccentric, WhatWldMrsWeasleyDo, TheRimmerConnection, Icy Sapphire15, Mrs. James Norrington, Master Fedora, Hannah Mustang, JazzySatinDoll, TangerineTea, Lilac24, Reona, Ummidia Q, and neko-on-fire. I wasn't always so good at responding to said reviews, but many of them made me laugh and all of them were appreciated. _

_Thanks a lot for reading, everybody. :)  
_


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